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THE  HIBBERT  LECTURES 

SECOND  SERIES 

1911 


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THE  HIGHER  ASPECTS 

OF 

GREEK  RELIGION 

LECTURES 

DELIVERED  AT  OXFORD  AND  IN  LONDON 
IN  APRIL  AND  MAY  191 1 

BY 

L.  R.  FARNELL,  D.Litt. 

WILDE  LECTURER  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF   OXFORD 


NEW   YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

1912 


CONTENTS 


Lecture  I 

GENERAL  FEATURES  AND  ORIGINS  OF  GREEK 
RELIGION 

Greek  religion  mainly  a  social-political  system,  1.  In  its  earliest 
period  a  "theistic"  creed,  that  is,  a  worship  of  personal  individual 
deities,  ethical  personalities  rather  than  mere  nature  forces,  2. 
Anthropomorphism  its  predominant  bias,  2-3.  Yet  preserving  many 
primitive  features  of  "  animism  "  or  "  animatism,"  3-5.  Its  progress 
gradual  without  violent  break  with  its  distant  past,  5-6.  The  ele- 
ment of  magic  fused  with  the  religion  but  not  predominant,  6-7. 
Hellenism  and  Hellenic  religion  a  blend  of  two  ethnic  strains,  one 
North-Aryan,  the  other  Mediterranean,  mainly  Minoan-Mycenaean, 
7-9.  Criteria  by  which  we  can  distinguish  the  various  influences  of 
these  two,  9-1 6.  The  value  of  Homeric  evidence,  18-20.  Sum- 
mary of  results,  21-24. 

Lecture  II 

THE  RELIGIOUS  BOND  AND  MORALITY  OF 
THE  FAMILY 

The  earliest  type  of  family  in  Hellenic  society  patrilinear,  25-27. 
Earliest  religious  phenomena  the  cult  of  the  hearth  and  of  Zeus 
the  God  of  the  household,  27-30.  Marriage  a  religious  ceremony, 
consecrated  to  Zeus  and  Hera,  in  some  sense  a  sacrament  or 
mystery,  30-32.  Its  connection  with  the  agricultural  life,  32-34. 
Dedication  of  the  bride  to  the  tutelary  hero  or  divinity,  34-35. 


vi  HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

Marriage  a  social-religious  duty,  35-36.  The  ethics  of  the  family, 
36-37.  Adultery  and  certain  sexual  offences  a  social-religious 
wrong ;  but  no  moral  exaltation  of  virginity,  38-43.  Family-purity 
maintained  by  the  Erinyes  but  mainly  by  the  higher  deities,  39-41. 
The  high  sense  of  family  duty  the  master-work  of  Greek  religion, 
43-45.      Philosophic  ethics  reflecting  popular  cult,  45-47. 


Lecture  III 

FAMILY  MORALITY  (CONTINUED):  TRIBAL  AND 
CIVIC  RELIGION 

Sanctity  of  the  father,  48-50.  The  power  and  moral  effects  of  the 
Curse,  50-53.  Influence  of  family-religion  on  the  position  of  the 
slave,  religious  method  of  manumission,  54-56.  The  family  a  unit 
of  the  clan  or  tribe,  58.  The  genos  and  phratria,  even  the  local 
organisation  of  the  deme,  based  on  the  idea  of  kinship  and  on  the 
cults  of  the  deities  of  kinship  and  ancestral  heroes,  58-61.  Object 
of  this  religion  to  preserve  civic  purity  of  blood,  62.  Greek  religion 
in  relation  to  the  Polls,  63-64.  The  Greek  State  sometimes  of 
religious  origin,  64-65.  The  city  regarded  as  a  single  family,  hence 
the  domestic  character  of  many  civic  cults,  65-68.  The  high  Gods 
political  powers,  especially  Zeus,  Apollo,  and  Athena,  68-69.  Greek 
religion  unique  in  respect  of  its  political  character,  69-71.  The 
State-deity  sometimes  the  physical  ancestor,  71-72. 


Lecture  IV 

INFLUENCE  OF  THE  CIVIC  SYSTEM  OF  RELIGION 
UPON  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT,  MORALITY  AND  LAW 

Worship  confined  to  citizens,  the  religious  tone  genial  rather  than 
profoundly  reverential,  73-74.  Importance  of  the  idea  of  kinship 
with  the  deity,  75-76.  Clan  morality  implies  collective  responsi- 
bility and  vicarious  human  sacrifice,  76-78.  Religious  aspect  of  civic 
duties,  courage,  patriotism,  78-83.  The  alien  invader  a  pollution 
to  the  temples,  83-84.  Religious  origins  of  the  laws  concerning 
homicide,  84-91. 


CONTENTS  vii 


Lecture  V 


EXPANSION  OF  GREEK  RELIGION  BEYOND  THE 
LIMITS  OF  THE  POLIS 

Beginnings  of  a  national  religion  in  the  Homeric  period,  92-93. 
Cult  of  Zeus  Panhellenios,  94-95.  The  early  Amphictyonies,  the 
Delphic  Oracle,  96-99.  Expansion  of  early  Greek  morality,  98-99. 
Universal  moral  force  of  the  oath,  99-100.  The  rights  of  aliens, 
100-102.  Duties  of  hospitality,  102-103.  Religious  sanction  of 
friendship,  103-104.  Humanism  in  religion^  readiness  to  recognise 
native  gods  in  alien  forms  of  divinity,  104-106.  Tolerance  and  the 
absence  of  religious  wars,  106-107.  The  higher  divine  attributes, 
107-124.  The  idea  of  divine  vengeance  early  associated  with  the 
idea  of  divine  mercy,  107-115.  The  vindictive  theory  challenged 
by  poets  and  philosophers,  1 14-1 1 5.  Ethical  theory  of  punishment 
connected  with  the  doctrine  of  the  perfect  goodness  of  God, 
114-116.  The  problem  of  evil,  115-116.  Association  of  religion 
with  art  and  science,  116-124. 


Lecture  VI 

PERSONAL  RELIGION  IN  GREECE 

Development  of  the  individual  conscience,  125-127.  Question  of 
the  personal  vitality  of  Greek  religion,  127-134.  The  growth  of 
the  idea  of  purity  as  a  religious  ideal,  134-136.  The  union  of 
the  mortal  with  the  divine,  136-137.  The  ritual  of  the  sacra- 
ment, 136-137.  The  value  of  the  mysteries,  137-140.  Religion 
becoming  more  inward  and  more  spiritual,  141-147.  Spread  of 
individualism  and  humanitarianism,  147-150. 


HIGHER  ASPECTS 
OF  GREEK  RELIGION 

LECTURE   I 

INTRODUCTORY    SKETCH 

There  are  many  salient  points  of  contrast  that  may 

guide  our  classification  of  religions  ;  but  none  is  more 

significant  than  that  which  strikes  us  at  first  glance  in 

comparing  early  Hellenic  polytheism  with,  for  instance, 

early  Christianity.     We  have,  in  the  first,  a  religion 

that  is  pre-eminently  social-political — one,  that  is,  in 

which  man's  attachment  to  the  divine  powers  is  rooted 

in  his  corporate  fife,  in  the  economy  of  the  household, 

the  tribe,  the  city  ;  in  the  second,  one  whose  objective 

or  primary  concern  is  the  personal  individual  soul 

in  its  spiritual  and  mystic  relations  with  God. 

In   selecting,   then,   the   higher   social   aspects   of 

Greek  polytheism  as  the  main  subject  of  this  course, 

I  shall  not  be  presenting  the  whole  picture,  indeed, 

but  at  least  the  dominant  features  of  this  religion, 

and  an  aspect  which  occasionally  runs  risk  of  being 

ignored  by  some  of  our  English  anthropologists.     In 

my  concluding  lecture  I  shall  give  a  short  estimate 

of  the  higher  personal,  as  distinct  from  the  purely 

1  1 


g  HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

social,  religion  of  the  Hellenes;  for  the  subject  is  of 
great  interest  in  itself,  and  in  the  study  of  certain 
departments  of  religious  morality  the  one  essentially 
involves  the  other. 

As  Greek  religion  is  unusually  complex,  any  partial 
statement  of  it  is  apt  to  be  misleading  unless  accom- 
panied by  clear  comprehension  of  the  whole.  For 
this  years  of  study  are  necessary ;  but  it  may  assist 
the  understanding  of  this  special  subject  that  I  am 
going  to  treat,  if  I  preface  it  by  an  outline  sketch 
of  the  general  phenomena  and  of  the  conclusions  at 
which  I  have  arrived  concerning  them. 

Greek  rehgion  is  presented  to  us  by  its  various 
records  mainly  as  a  polytheism  of  personal  divinities, 
grouped  in  certain  family  relationships  around  and 
under  a  supreme  god.  Theoretically  the  chief  divinity 
is  male  in  sky,  earth,  and  sea,  but  in  certain  localities 
the  goddess-cult  is  more  powerful.  The  higher  beings 
are  rarely  recognisable  as  personifications  of  physical 
forces  of  nature,  and  it  is  only  of  a  very  few  of  them 
that  a  nature-origin  can  be  posited  or  proved;  and 
though  many  of  them  have  special  departments  of 
nature  for  their  peculiar  concern,  they  are  chiefly  to 
be  regarded  as  ethical  and  intellectual  personalities, 
friendly  on  the  whole  to  man  and  powerful  to  aid  in 
all  that  concerns  his  physical  and  social  life.  These 
elements  in  Greek  religion  belong  to  theism,  and, 
from  the  social  and  political  point  of  view,  these  are 
by  far  the  most  important.  And  in  these  theistic  crea- 
tions of  the  Hellene  the  dominant  impulse  was  that 
which  we  call  anthropomorphism,  a  mode  of  feehng 


INTRODUCTORY   SKETCH  3 

and  thought  to  which  the  average  Greek  tempera- 
ment was  so  attracted  that  both  the  artistic  and 
the  religious  history  of  the  race  were  mainly  deter- 
mined by  it.  For  instance,  it  explains  the  compara- 
tive absence  of  mysticism  in  this  religion  and  the 
strong  bias  towards  hero-cult  which  can  be  traced 
from  the  pre-Homeric  age  onwards.  It  equally  ex- 
plains the  iconic  or  idolatrous  impulse  which  has  left 
so  deep  an  imprint  upon  pre-Christian  Hellenism  and 
on  the  Greek  Christian  Church. 

But  we  must  also  reckon  with  the  lower  products 
and  phenomena  which  it  has  been  the  chief  function 
of  modern  anthropology  to  explore  and  explain. 
Besides  the  worship  of  these  glorified  anthropomor- 
phic beings  called  "  theoi,"  we  have  to  deal  with  facts 
that  seem  to  point  to  direct  worship,  or  at  least  the 
respectful  tendance,  of  animals,  the  ritual  of  certain 
localities  prescribing  an  offering,  for  instance,  to  the 
flies,  to  the  wolves,  or  to  a  pig.  And  one  of  the  high 
divinities  might  at  times  be  imagined  as  incarnate  in 
the  animal,  Apollo  possibly  in  the  wolf,  Poseidon  in 
the  horse,  Dionysos  in  the  bull  and  goat.  We  may 
regard  these  beliefs  and  practices  as  the  deposit  of 
an  age,  not  indeed  of  pure  theriomorphism — for  it  is 
very  doubtful  if  such  ever  existed  in  the  history  of 
religions — but  of  one  when  the  anthropomorphic 
imagination  was  unstable  and  the  divinity  might  be 
conceived  as  embodied  now  in  human  now  in  animal 
form.  Again,  though  the  Greek  imagination  tended 
forcibly  towards  the  concrete  and  definite,  it  admitted 
the  apprehension  of  vaguer,  more  inchoate,  forms  of 


4  HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

nameless  daimones  or  "  theoi,"  such  as  those  who  pre- 
side over  birth — Fei/eTuXXtSe?,  KwXiaSe? — or  over  the 
lower  world  with  its  associations  of  death  and  of  the 
curse  and  the  miasma  of  bloodshed,  the  'Epivve<;, 
IT/DaftSifcat,  Geol  MeuXiXiOL ;  such  figures  showing  a 
far  less  degree  of  anthropomorphic  personification 
than  the  robust  personages  of  the  higher  polytheism, 
who  were  as  vividly  realised  as  are  the  divine  figures 
of  modern  Mediterranean  rehgion. 

But,  furthermore,  certain  objects  of  Greek  cult 
remained  outside  the  region  of  that  which  we  call 
personal  theism ;  and  we  have  records  or  hints  of 
direct  worship  being  offered  to  the  thunder  or  the 
thunder-stone,  the  winds,  the  rivers  and  streams,  and 
with  greater  earnestness  and  profit  to  the  holy 
hearth  of  the  house.  And  while  the  same  anthropo- 
morphic bias  which  succeeded  in  evolving  or  detach- 
ing the  river-god  or  nymph  from  the  element  gave 
the  stimulus  to  a  religious  art  the  most  beautiful  the 
world  has  seen,  yet  certain  aniconic  sacred  things 
that  we  may  call  fetishes — the  hewn  stock  or  pillar, 
the  meteorite,  the  axe — continued  to  appeal  to  the 
religious  awe  both  of  individuals  and  states  from  the 
earliest  to  the  latest  periods  of  this  polytheism. 

These  diverse  phenomena  may  be  classified  under 
various  categories  for  which  the  science  of  religions 
has  invented  technical  terms.  The  salient  and  pre- 
dominant portion  of  Hellenic  worship  and  belief  may 
be  called  theism,  which  is  based  on  the  perception  of 
concrete  individual  deities  ;  where  we  find  a  nature- 
object,  wind,  water,  or  thunder,  revered  as  if  endowed 


INTRODUCTORY   SKETCH  5 

with  a  soul,  we  term  this  mental  process  animism,  a 
term,  however,  only  rarely  applicable  to  the  Greek 
phenomena  apart  from  the  worship  of  the  dead, 
applicable,  for  instance,  to  the  Attic  cult  of  the 
Tritopatores,  who  appear  to  have  been  regarded 
partly  as  ancestral  ghosts,  partly  as  wind-powers; 
thirdly,  where  we  find  the  object  worshipped  in 
and  for  itself  as  sentient  and  animate,  a  thunder- 
stone,  moving  water,  a  blazing  hearth,  we  should 
describe  the  religious  consciousness  as  animatism 
rather  than  animism,  which  imphes  the  definite 
conception  of  souls  or  spirits. 

It  is  a  marked  feature  of  the  evolution  of  Greek 
religion  that  the  lower  and  more  embryonic  forms  of 
faith  survive  through  the  ages  by  the  side  of  the 
higher  and  more  developed.  This  was  natural, 
because  in  its  history  there  were  no  cataclysms,  no 
violent  spiritual  revolutions  breaking  away  with  the 
past  and  endeavouring  to  obliterate  it.  The  priest- 
hood was  conservative  and  did  not  champion  spiritual 
or  intellectual  reform.  At  times  a  ''  prophet " 
emerges,  but  not  with  the  significance  or  the  mission 
of  an  Isaiah :  the  prophet  Epimenides  of  Crete  was  ^ 
merely  the  propagator  of  an  elaborate  system  of 
purification  ;  the  Orphic-Pythagorean  sectaries  who 
were  the  first  missionaries  in  Hellas  were  chiefly 
concerned  with  preaching  a  new  theory  and  system 
for  the  posthumous  salvation  of  the  soul ;  and,  while 
their  theology  contained  in  it  many  germs  of  higher 
thought,  it  was  more  deeply  rooted  in  savagery  than 
the  ordinary  Hellenic.     Progress  there  certainly  was 


6  HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

through  the  slow  course  of  centuries,  but  it  was 
gradual  and  half-unconscious ;  crude  and  savage 
practices  gradually  fell  into  desuetude  or  retained 
only  a  faint  semblance  of  life.  No  doubt  philosophy 
contributed  much  to  this  progress,  though  indirectly  ; 
the  philosophic  protest  was  more  usually  directed 
against  the  immoralities  of  mythology  than  against 
the  prevailing  forms  of  worship  and  the  structure  of 
the  polytheism.  In  any  case,  this  protest,  of  what- 
ever avail  it  was,  forms  part  of  the  higher  history  of 
Hellenic  religious  thought. 

Finally,  the  slightest  general  sketch  of  this  poly- 
theism must  not  omit  to  include  the  element  of 
magic,  a  practice  which  some  writers  regard  as 
antagonistic  to  real  religion  and  which  certainly 
impHes  a  different  relation  between  man  and  God 
from  that  assumed  by  worship  and  prayer,  but  which 
nevertheless  tends  to  maintain  itself  openly  or  dis- 
guised in  much  of  the  higher  ritual  of  the  nations. 
Thus  the  Greek  rites  of  sacrifice,  prayer,  and  hymn 
were  in  the  main  religion,  pure  and  simple  ;  but 
the  invocation  of  the  potent  names  of  the  divinity 
was  at  one  time  supposed  no  doubt  to  have  a 
magic  power  of  compulsion.  The  newly  discovered 
hymn  of  the  Kouretes^  reveals  the  youthful  priests 
"leaping"  for  the  good  of  the  fields  and  the  crops, 
and  the  young  god,  Zeus  Kovpo^,  is  entreated  or 
commanded  to  ''  leap  "  with  them— that  is,  to  prac- 
tise the  same  magic  for  the  land.  Yet  Greek 
religion  early  rose  high  above  the  magic  level,  and 

1   Vide  Annual  of  the  British  School  at  Athens,  19O8-I909,  p.  345. 


INTRODUCTORY   SKETCH  7 

the  evils  of  magic-practices,  familiar  to  us  in  the 
record  of  other  societies,  are  not  clearly  attested  of 
early  Greece.  We  do  not  hear  of  witch-finders  and 
homicidal  sorcerers.  Magic  tablets,  by  means  of 
which  the  life  of  a  person  was  devoted  to  destruction 
by  nailing  down  his  name,  the  "  defixionum  tabellse,"  ^ 
are  not  found  before  the  fifth  century  at  the  earliest, 
and  we  have  reason  to  suppose  that  Orphic  influences 
emanating  from  a  religion  originally  non- Hellenic 
suggested  their  use  ;  and  some  of  them  in  the  fourth 
and  third  centuries  bear  the  form  of  a  religious  prayer 
merely.  In  a  fifth-century  inscription  containing  the 
commination  service  of  Teos,"  we  have  the  first  proof 
that  magic  was  feared  as  a  public  danger :  "  Whoso- 
ever maketh  baneful  drugs  against  the  Teians, 
whether  against  individuals  or  the  whole  people,  may 
he  perish,  both  he  and  his  offspring  "  ;  and  Plato,^  in 
his  Laws,  frames  certain  legislation  against  those  who 
endeavour  to  injure  others  by  spells  and  invocations, 
concerning  the  efficacy  of  which  the  philosopher  in 
his  mental  decay  is  not  able  to  make  up  his  mind. 
But  it  was  mainly  in  the  Greeco-Roman  period,  under 
the  influence  of  the  Oriental  spirit  and  in  combination 
with  the  daimonistic  theory  of  later  theosophy,  that 
magic  assumed  formidable  dimensions  and  became  a 
potent  cause  of  intellectual  decline. 

These  various  strains  in  this  complex  polytheism 
afford  various  problems  to  the  historian  of  origins, 

1  Jevons'   Transactions  of  Coiigress  of  History  of  Religions,  I9O8, 
vol.  ii.  p.  131. 

2  Roehl,  Inscr.  Grcec.  Antiq,,  497  :  vide  Miss  Harrison,  Prolegomena, 
p.  142.  3  p.  932  E-933  E. 


8  HIGHER  ASPECTS   OF  GREEK   RELIGION 

and  suggest  many  difficult  questions  concerning  the 
ethnology  and  the  early  formative  factors  of  Greek 
religion.  As  the  student  is  constantly  being  called 
upon  to  adjust  himself  in  regard  to  these  speculations 
concerning  origin  and  race,  a  brief  statement  of 
my  own  views  may  serve  to  clear  the  ground  on 
which  I  may  afterwards  expose  the  higher  aspects  of 
the  religion.  No  ethnologist  of  repute  will  now 
dispute  the  theorem  that  the  historic  Hellenic  peoples 
were  the  product  of  a  fusion  between  certain  tribes 
coming  from  the  North,  "  Aryan "  in  speech  and 
social  system,  and  an  indigenous  Mediterranean  stock 
with  whom  they  intermingled  as  conquerors  or  by 
peaceful  intermarriage.  And  this  latter  race  we  now 
know,  thanks  to  the  discoveries  in  Crete,  Mycense,  and 
elsewhere,  to  have  been  one  of  high  culture  in  respect 
of  the  arts  and  the  other  departments  of  social  life. 
Though  the  northern  immigrants  may  have  tempor- 
arily interrupted  and  impaired  the  culture,  we  may  be 
sure  that  they  did  not  destroy  or  uproot  the  indigenous 
religion.  A  clear  comprehension,  then,  of  this  latter 
is  as  necessary  for  the  solution  of  the  Hellenic 
problem  as  is  a  knowledge  of  the  religious  rites  and 
personalities  that  the  Aryan  immigrants  brought  with 
them  from  the  North.  At  present  we  are  far  from 
being  completely  informed  on  either  of  tliese  sides ;  but 
the  discoveries  and  researches  of  Sir  Arthur  Evans  and 
others,^  on  the  soil  of  Crete  and  other  centres  of  the 

1  Fide  A.  Evans'  ^'  Mycengean  Tree-  and  Pillar-cult/'  in  Journ. 
Hellen.  Studies,  1901.  R.  Burrows,  The  Discoveries  in  Crete,  pp.  31- 
32,  112-116,  127-128. 


INTRODUCTORY   SKETCH  9 

Minoan- Mycenaean  culture,  have  established  certain 
facts  of  great  importance  for  our  religious  problem, 
and  we  can  to  some  extent  reconstruct  the  features 
of  the  Mediterranean  religion  that  the  Northerners 
found  established  in  the  Southern  Greek  lands. 

The  most  striking  figure  in  the  Minoan  worship 
was  a  great  goddess,  conceived  mainly  as  a  mother 
but  here  and  there  also  as  virginal,  imagined  as  a 
mountain  goddess,  whose  familiar  animals  were  the 
lion  and  the  snake,  and  ethnically  related  to  the 
Phrygian  Cybele  and  the  ancestress  of  the  Cretan 
Rhea  and  probably  of  some  Hellenic  goddesses.  By 
her  side  is  sometimes  represented  a  youthful  deity 
imagined  probably  as  her  lover  or  son.  We  discern 
also  the  figure  of  a  sky-god,  armed  and  descending 
through  the  air.  But  we  cannot  doubt  but  that  the 
goddess-cult  was  the  predominant  factor  of  the 
religion.  And  this  accords  with  the  interesting 
results  gained  by  the  excavations  conducted  by  Dr 
Waldstein  on  the  site  of  the  Argive  Herjeum,  which 
attest  an  immemorial  goddess-cult  on  this  spot.  The 
Minoan  imagination  of  the  divinity  was  clearly 
anthropomorphic,  but  probably  admitted  the  idea 
that  it  might  occasionally  be  embodied  in  animal 
form  ;  that  is  to  say,  the  anthropomorphism  was  not 
yet  stable.  That  the  Cretan  religion  ran  riot  in 
a  totemistic  theriolatry  was  an  erroneous  conception 
suggested  by  the  misinterpretation  of  certain  devices 
on  Cretan  signet-rings  and  seals. ^     Besides  the  higher 

1  Vide  Cook,  "Animal  Worship  in  the  Mycenaean  Age/'  Hellcn. 
Journ.j  1894. 


10         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

divinities,  we  have  reason  to  suppose  that  the  Cretan- 
Minoan  reUgion  admitted  the  divine  ancestor  to  a 
share  in  worship  ;  and  the  relation  of  the  king  to  the 
deity  was  evidently  most  intimate.  The  legend  of 
King  Minos'  intercourse  with  Zeus  is  an  indication 
which  gains  in  significance  by  the  important  fact, 
revealed  by  the  excavations,  that  the  only  shrines 
were  within  the  king's  palace,  no  constructed  temples 
on  open  sites  other  than  the  cave-shrines  having  as 
yet  been  found  in  Minoan  Crete.  As  regards  the 
ritual  of  this  period,  the  famous  sarcophagus  found 
at  Hagia  Triada  ^  reveals  a  ceremony  of  blood-offer- 
ing, in  which  the  blood  of  the  sacred  ox  is  first 
caught  in  a  receptacle  and  then  poured  on  an  altar  ; 
we  may  take  this  as  evidence  of  the  idea  of  a  mystic 
potency  inherent  in  the  blood  of  the  victim.  The  skin 
of  the  sacrificed  ox  seems  also  to  have  been  sacred, 
for  four  of  the  worshippers  are  wearing  it ;  and  the 
rite  differs  in  details  of  some  importance  from  the 
later  Hellenic. 

Finally,  we  have  faint  glimpses  in  Cretan  myth- 
ology of  a  communion-service  in  which  the  mortal 
was  absorbed  into  the  divine  nature  by  the  simulated 
fiction  of  a  holy  marriage  ;  a  mystery  much  enacted 
by  the  later  Cybele-ritual,  which,  we  may  believe, 
descended  collaterally  from  a  Minoan  source.^ 

The  last  point  worth  noting  here  is  that  the 
temple-service   of    this   earlier   pre-Hellenic    culture 

1  Fide  Paribeni  in  Monumenti  Antichi  {dei  Lincei),  xix.  p.  1,  etc.. 
Pis.  i.  and  ii. 

2  Vide  my  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  iii.  pp.  298-302. 


INTRODUCTORY   SKETCH  11 

was  probably  aniconic ;  the  human  image  of  the 
divinity,  though  carved  for  other  purposes,  was  not 
set  up  as  the  central  object  of  worship  ;  the  sacred 
"  agalmata,"  the  tokens  of  the  divine  presence,  were 
the  axe,  the  pillar,  even  the  cross. 

We  may  now  turn  to  the  other,  probably  the 
predominating,  factor  of  the  Hellenism  that  de- 
veloped in  these  lands,  and  consider  the  stage  of 
religious  development  reached  by  the  earliest 
"Aryan-Hellenic"  immigrants  from  the  North,  the 
ideas  and  forms  and  personages  of  their  cults,  if  it  is 
possible  to  discover  them.  No  one  will  now  set 
forth  to  reconstruct  an  aboriginal  Indo-Germanic 
religion ;  the  fanciful  structures  set  up  by  former 
scholars  have  long  passed  into  the  limbo  of  abortive 
anthropplogy.  But  the  far  more  limited  problem 
just  stated  ought  not  to  lie  beyond  the  range  of 
modern  science,  especially  as  the  suspicion  grows 
that  the  breaking  into  the  Southern  Peninsula  from 
the  Balkans  of  the  warlike  tribes  of  North- Aryan 
kinship — Acheeans,  Minyai,  Dryopes,  lonians,  and 
others — was  a  late  event  in  Mediterranean  history, 
later  perhaps  than  the  middle  of  the  second  millen- 
nium ;  for  this  has  been  strongly  corroborated  by 
recent  valuable  exploration  of  the  plain  of  Thessaly 
by  Messrs  Wace  and  Thompson,^  revealing  to  us 
this  desirable  grass-region  as  peopled  down  to  a 
period  later  perhaps  than  1500  B.C.  by  a  race  still  on 
the  neolithic  level,  a  people  living  defencelessly  in 
villages   on   the   plain,   not    yet    disturbed    by    the 

1  Vide  Hellenic  Journal,  xxviii.  p.  323,  xxix.  p.  359,  xxx.  p.  360. 


12         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

trampling  of  the  invader  or  by  the  rumour  of  war 
from  the  North.  Let  us  assume  that  the  Acheean 
and  his  kinsfolk  of  other  warlike  tribes  were  forcing 
their  way  South  at  some  time  in  the  first  half  of  the 
second  millennium,  arriving  thus  at  the  home  that 
they  were  to  make  famous  about  the  zenith  of  the 
Minoan  age  and  not  so  many  centuries  before  the 
Homeric.  How,  then,  are  we  to  get  to  know  the 
religion  of  the  proto- Hellene,  who  is,  after  all,  not  so 
remote  from  us  ?  The  comparative  argument  from 
other  Aryan  religions  is  always  at  any  point  capable 
of  deceiving  us.  Still,  our  convictions  cannot  help 
being  influenced  by  what  we  know  of  other  Aryan 
races  at  any  early  period  in  their  history ;  and  by  far 
the  most  momentous  and  earliest  fact  in  the  religious 
history  of  any  Aryan  race  is  revealed  to  us  by  the 
newly  discovered  cuneiform  inscription  found  at 
Boghaz-Keui,  dating  not  far  from  1400  b.c.^  It 
reveals  to  us  that  the  Vedic-Iranian  religion  had 
already  reached  the  higher  stage  of  theism  at  this 
period,  the  names  Mitra,  Varuna,  being  already 
applied  to  personal  gods. 

To  suppose  that  the  proto-Hellenic  Aryan  was  in 
the  godless  stage,  worshipping  perhaps  at  best  vague 
and  formless  "  numina  "  or  shadowy  divine  potencies 
rather  than  persons,  or  worshipping  only  some  totem- 
animal,  or  perhaps  nothing  at  all,  and  that  the  revela- 
tion of  the  higher  polytheism  was  reserved  for  him 

1  Fide  E.  Meyer,  "  Das  erste  auftreten  der  Aryer  in  der 
Geschichte,"  in  the  Sitzwigsherichte  d.  Kbnigl.  preuss.  Akad. 
Wissensch.,   1908,  p.   14. 


INTRODUCTORY   SKETCH  13 

until  after  he  had  entered  upon  his  Southern  in- 
heritance, all  this  is  to  my  mind  a  strong  delusion, 
making  havoc  of  the  reasonable  interpretation  of 
later  contemporary  and  prehistoric  facts. 

We  may  be  able  by  a  logical  reconstruction  of 
the  debris  of  prehistoric  religious  deposits  to  exhibit 
the  "  making  of  a  god  " ;  but  the  period  when  '*  Zeus 
was  not  yet  Zeus"  does  not  belong  to  the  earliest 
history  of  the  race  whom  we  may  dare  to  call  Aryan- 
Hellenic.  The  proto- Hellenes  brought  in  certain 
deities  already  made,  and  found  certain  others  already 
made  and  crystallised  in  the  Mediterranean  area  over 
which  they  spread. 

Assuming  this,  we  may  feel  that  the  question 
— what  was  the  primitive  nature- significance  or 
animistic  germ  of  this  or  that  Hellenic  divinity  ? — 
though  a  legitimate  one,  may  really  start  us  down 
a  false  track.  For,  if  the  early  invaders  adopted  a 
Minoan-Mycen«an  divinity,  say  Rhea  or  Artemis  or 
Aphrodite,  she  would  be  for  them  just  Rhea  or 
Artemis  or  Aphrodite,  a  concrete  personality  as  real 
for  them  as  the  Virgin  Mary  for  their  late  descend- 
ants ;  they  might  not  be  inclined  to  inquire  about, 
or  even  to  suspect,  the  natural  phenomenon  in  the 
background  of  these  personages. 

If  this  view,  which  I  cannot  here  argue  further, 
is  correct,  and  if  the  earliest  Hellenes  were  already 
somewhat  advanced  in  respect  of  theistic  thought 
and  belief,  the  question  at  once  arises  whether  we 
can  distinguish  between  the  divinities  of  the  Northern 
immigrants  and  those  which  they  adopted  from  the 


V 


14         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

earlier  Mediterranean  race.  We  are  not  yet  near 
the  final  settlement  of  this  question ;  doubtless  we 
shall  be  brought  nearer  to  it  by  the  decipherment 
of  the  iEgean-Minoan  script,  if  that  feat  is  ever 
accomplished.  For  the  present  we  have  primarily 
the  clue  of  language ;  those  names  of  divinities  in 
which  we  can  discover  with  certainty  or  reasonable 
probability  a  Hellenic  or  even  an  I ndo- Germanic 
stem  are  generally  regarded  as  belonging  to  the 
tradition  of  the  invaders  from  the  North  ;  such  are 
Zeus,  the  stem  of  whose  name  was  used  for  the 
divine  names  belonging  to  other  Aryan  races,  pro- 
bably Poseidon,  Demeter,  Hestia,  Pan.  But  the 
names  of  other  leading  divinities — such  as  Athena, 
Aphrodite,  Artemis,  Hephaistos — remain  etymological 
puzzles  and  may  be  derived  from  the  non-Hellenic 
speech  of  indigenous  peoples.  Yet  even  if  we  could 
be  more  sure  than  we  are  about  the  names,  the 
etymology  of  the  names  does  not  always  bring  us  to 
the  inwardness  of  the  facts.  The  Aryan  Hellenes 
may  have  attached  their  own  divine  names  Demeter 
and  Hera  to  the  great  goddesses  of  Eleusis  and 
Argos ;  but  the  mystery  worship  of  Eleusis  may 
well  have  been  a  heritage  of  the  aboriginal  population 
and  the  goddess  of  Argos  may  have  been  many 
centuries  older  than  the  earliest  probable  date  that 
can  be  assigned  to  the  first  inroads  of  the  Northern 
invaders. 

But  sometimes  certain  facts  of  cult  and  ritual 
will  help  us  to  decide  more  surely  than  the  etymo- 
logical  analysis   of  names.     We   do   not   know  the 


INTRODUCTORY   SKETCH  15 

meaning  of  the  name  Apollon  ;  but  we  may  be  sure 
that  he  came  in  from  the  North,  because  his  sacred 
pilgrims'  way,  which  he  himself  traversed  every 
fourth  year  in  the  incarnation  of  a  beautiful  boy,  led 
from  Tempe  to  Delphi,  and  his  other  sacred  route, 
down  which  came  the  yearly  hyperborean  offerings 
from  the  North,  passed  down  the  Adriatic  shores  of 
Greece  to  Dodona ;  we  may  infer  that  the  god  him- 
self had  traversed  both  these  natural  highways  of  the 
Northerners'  invasion.  And  these  facts  of  well- 
attested  ancient  ritual  outweigh  all  that  has  been 
said  by  Wilamowitz  in  favour  of  his  hypothesis  that 
Apollo  arose  in  Lycia.  Again,  the  Northern  origin 
of  Poseidon  is  corroborated  by  the  geographical 
record  of  his  cult.  Still  clearer  is  the  evidence  con- 
cerning Dionysos,  the  deity  who  overshadowed  most 
others  in  the  later  Hellenism  ;  it  is  the  generally 
accepted  view  that  his  cult  originated  among  a 
Thracian  people  of  Indo-Germanic  speech. 

Another  test  that  may  help  us  in  dealing  with  the 
ethnic  problems  of  this  composite  rehgion  is  the 
greater  or  lesser  prominence  of  the  cult  of  the  god  or 
the  goddess.  Now,  the  early  records  of  such  Aryan 
peoples  as  the  Vedic-Indians,  the  Iranians,  the 
Teutonic  and  Slavonic  nations,  indicate  the  pre- 
dominance of  the  male  divinity,  although  goddess- 
worship  is  found  in  all  these  races  and  cannot  be 
explained  away  as  a  non- Aryan  phenomenon. 
Therefore  the  supremacy  of  the  father-god  Zeus, 
who  took  his  name  Olympios  from  the  distant 
mountain  on  the   northern   confines   of  Greece,  the 


16         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

early  influence  in  Thessaly  and  North  Greece  of  such 
gods  as  Poseidon  and  Apollo,  can  be  regarded  as  the 
products  of  the  northern  religious  tradition. 

On  the  other  hand,  certain  districts  of  the  Medi- 
terranean, especially  those  in  which  the  Minoan- 
Mycensean  culture  flourished,  have  been  from 
immemorial  time  under  the  rule  of  the  goddess. 
The  Aryan  conquerors  from  the  North,  in  obedience 
to  a  racial  instinct,  might  endeavour  to  supplant  this  ; 
as  we  find  the  Bithynians,  Aryan  cousins  of  the 
Thrako-Phrygians,  endeavouring  to  exalt  the  father- 
god  above  the  great  mother,  Cybele.  But  the  old 
tradition  of  the  land  was  often  invincible  against 
such  attempts.  Where,  then,  we  find  the  goddess 
supreme,  as  at  Athens,  Argos,  Crete,  Samos,  and 
elsewhere,  we  may  discern  here  in  the  composite 
religion  the  element  contributed  by  the  older 
indigenous  culture.  We  may  draw  the  same  con- 
clusion when  we  find  the  virginity  of  the  goddess  a 
prevailing  dogma ;  for,  though  certain  Aryan  myth- 
ologies— the  Teutonic,  for  instance — are  aware  of  a 
few  subordinate  divine  figures  conceived  as  virginal, 
yet  the  tendency  of  the  Indo-Germanic  pantheons  is 
to  link  the  goddess  with  the  god. 

I  have  been  considering  the  ethnic  question  as  if 
we  had  only  to  estimate  the  respective  force  of  the 
Northern  and  the  Minoan-Mycensean  influence  on 
Greek  polytheism.  I  am  aware  of  the  other  theories 
put  forward  by  certain  speciaUsts  who  would  find  in 
Babylon  or  Egypt  the  origins  of  much  of  it. 

The  Babylonian  question  I  have  somewhat  elabo- 


INTRODUCTORY   SKETCH  17 

rately  discussed  in  a  former  course  of  lectures,^  and  I 
have  arrived  at  the  negative  conviction  that,  in  the 
second  millennium  B.C.,  Babylon  exercised  no  influence 
at  all  on  the  then  primitive  Greek  polytheism. 

The  Egyptian  theory  is  not  championed  by  any 
competent  student  of  comparative  religion.  M.  Fou- 
cart's  attempt  to  prove  the  Egyptian  origin  of  the 
Eleusinian  mysteries^  fails  to  convince  a  trained 
critic.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  early  Egyptian  religion  cast  certain  rays  upon 
Minoan  Crete ;  and  if  they  reached  ultimately  as 
far  as  the  Greek  mainland,  it  was  probably  through 
the  religious  atmosphere  of  this  great  island.  In  the 
main,  therefore,  the  view  that  the  chief  constituents 
of  the  polytheism  of  historic  Greece  are  a  Northern 
religious  tradition  and  an  indigenous  Mediterranean, 
of  which  the  Minoan- Mycenaean  religion  was  the 
culminating  point,  is  not  obviously  too  narrow.  For 
the  Asiatic  Greeks  we  must  reckon  also  with  the 
religious  traditions  of  the  Anatolian  Coast,  which  in 
many  respects  were  not  alien  to  those  of  Crete. 

This  slight  sketch  may  suffice  at  present  as  a 
background  for  the  social-religious  phenomena  which 
I  have  selected  as  a  topic  for  this  course.  But  in 
following  down  certain  lines  of  religious  development 
one  is  always  confronted  with  the  chronological 
question :  what  antiquity  is  to  be  assigned  to  the 
birth  of  some  of  the  higher  products  of  the  later 

^  Vide  Greece  and  Babylon  (1911). 

2  Recherches  sur  I'origine  et  la  natui^e  des  mysteres  d' E  leu  sis,  1895  ; 
cf.  my  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  iii.  141-143, 


18         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

historic  period  ?  And  this  involves  a  question  as  to 
the  level  of  political  and  religious  character  attained 
by  those  Northern  races  at  the  period  of  their  early 
immigration.  At  the  best  our  answer  can  only  be 
tentative,  a  hypothetical  construction  based  partly 
upon  Homeric  evidence  and  partly  on  the  later 
records  concerning  early  institutions,  early  cults, 
and  the  diffusion  of  cults. 

How,   then,    are   we   to   estimate   the    Homeric 
evidence?     The   question   is   vast   and   intricate,  as 
every  scholar  knows,    and  every  student   of  Greek 
religion  must  form  some  opinion  about  it.     I   can 
only  here  state  my  own  without  argument.     I  believe 
that    the    poems   give   us   a   partial   picture   of  the 
Greek  world  of  a  period   not   far   from    1000   B.C.  ; 
therefore,  as  moral  and  religious  forms  and  sentiments 
do  not  spring  up  in  a  year,  but  are  very  slow  in 
evolution,   I   believe  we  can  cautiously  argue  back 
from  the  Homeric  poems  so  as  to  gain  some  concep- 
tion of  the  moral  and  religious  forces  at  work  in  the 
centuries  preceding  the  age  of  the  poet.     Now,  the 
religion  of  Homer  strikes  the  student  who  is  trained 
in  the  comparative  criticism  of  this  field  as  generally 
advanced  in  respect  of  form  and  ritual,  and  generally 
elevated  in  sentiment ;  in  spite  of  occasional  frivolities, 
such  as  are  found  in  most  poetry  that  deals  with  the 
actions   of  gods,  the   moral-religious   tone   is   often 
earnest  and  profound  ;  in  the  cult-service  and  in  the 
relations  between  men  and  the  deities,  there  is  nothing 
savage  or  degrading.     And  the  almost  entire  absence 
of  any  element  of  savagery  has  appeared  to   many 


INTRODUCTORY    SKETCH  19 

scholars  a  puzzle,  of  which  different  solutions  have  been 
offered.  According  to  Professor  Murray,^  Homer — 
or  rather  the  Homeric  Syndicate — has  deliberately 
expurgated  and  refined  away  the  dross  of  savagery 
from  the  materials  out  of  which  the  poems  were 
built ;  or  this  expurgation  may  have  been  due  to  the 
educational  policy  of  Peisistratos  and  his  literary 
committee.  Mr  Lang,  in  strong  opposition,^  avers 
that  they  present  us  with  the  picture  of  an  Achaean 
religion,  purer  and  more  civilised  than  the  later 
Ionian  which  is  reflected  in  the  post-Homeric  Cycle ; 
thus  we  gather  that  the  Achasans  were  innocent  of 
human  sacrifice,  magic,  ghost-worship,  purification  by 
pig's  blood,  and  such  practices  as  are  familiar  to  the 
anthropologist  of  savage  life.  I  cannot  believe  that 
the  truth  lies  in  either  of  these  views,  while  the  second 
appears  to  me  even  further  removed  from  it  than  the 
first.  It  seems  unlikely  that  Homer  was  conscious 
of  a  mission,  or  set  to  work  as  a  moral  reformer ;  one 
would  not  call  the  authors  of  the  Volsunga  Saga  and 
the  Nib elungen- Lied  expurgators  because  they  omit 
much  that  was  dark  and  repulsive  in  old  Teutonic 
ritual.  The  chance  is  likely  enough  that  Homer,  like 
Shakespeare,  was  of  a  nature  more  refined,  high-bred, 
and  delicate  than  his  average  contemporary  ;  but  it  is 
better  to  suppose  that  he,  like  Shakespeare,  was  of  his 
age,  if  above  it  at  points.  But  most  paradoxical  in  this 
theory  of  expurgation  is  the  suggestion  that  Peisis- 
tratos and  his  circle  were  really  responsible  for  what 

1  The  Rise  of  the  Greek  Epic. 

2  The  World  of  Homer. 


20         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

we  call  Homeric  religion  ;  no  one  who  is  thoroughly 

conversant  with  the  religious  facts  of  Peisistratean 

Athens  could   believe  this  for  a  moment.     On  the 

other  hand,  Mr  Lang's  error  appears  to  me  no  less 

serious  ;  to  construct  an  imaginary  Ach^an  religion 

out  of  Homer's  silences  is  a  dangerous  adventure, 

and  he  himself  has  taught  us  how  to  criticise  such 

procedure ;    let  us  try  to  construct  an  Ehzabethan 

religion  out  of  Shakespeare's  silences,  and  then  enjoy 

the  ludicrously  false  picture  that  would  emerge.    The 

Shakespearean   drama   and   a   modern  three-volume 

novel  range  over  a  wider   surface   of  life   than   the 

Iliad ;  and  yet  they  only  reflect  a  small  fraction  of 

contemporary  life,  for  every  creator,  however  broad 

his  range,  can  only  select  little  and  must  omit  much. 

The  poet  of  the  Iliad  selects  a  four-days'  episode  of 

the  Trojan  war;   reciting  this  in  the  comparatively 

refined  hall  of  some  chieftain,  he  would  have  been 

foolishly  irrelevant  if  he  had  dragged  in  a  reference 

to  the  burning  of  a  scapegoat  or  the  ritual-murder  of 

a  daughter,  when  his  theme  did  not  suggest  such 

unpleasant  topics ;  nor  was  it  Shakespeare's  business 

to  allude  to  the  torturing  of  Jesuits  or  the  horrors  of 

Spain.     We  will  not,  then,  merely  on  the  ground  of 

Homer's   silence,   beUeve   that   the    Achseans    were 

innocent  of  human  sacrifice.      Nor,   in  fact,  is  the 

Homeric   religion,  critically  studied,  so  unlike   that 

of  the   later  historic  Greece  as  Mr  Lang  imagines. 

What   Homer   positively   tells   us,    valeat   tanti,  let 

us    accept   it   for   what  it   is   worth.       He   is   good 

witness   to   his   own   period,  within   his   limits,  and 


INTRODUCTORY   SKETCH  21 

indirectly  for  the  period  preceding  his  ;  but  he  reveals 
to  us  only  a  portion  of  the  whole. 

Many  years'  study  of  the  multiform  evidence 
concerning  the  social-religious  Ufe  of  the  pre-Homeric 
Northern  tribes  who  came  down  to  make  Greece  can 
only  yield  at  most  a  probable  hypothesis,  scarcely  a 
reasoned  inductive  certainty.  I  venture  to  embody 
some  of  my  own  conclusions  in  the  following  sketch, 
of  which  I  recognise  the  precariousness. 

The  Achasans  and  the  other  kindred  tribes  entered 
the  Southern  Peninsula  with  a  culture  probably  as 
advanced  at  least  as  that  of  the  early  Angli  at  the 
time  of  our  migration,  and  with  greater  aptitude  for 
absorbing  the  higher  civiHsation  which  they  found  : 
possessed  of  metals — bronze,  at  least — and  of  family 
institutions  of  patrilinear  monogamic  type,  with  which 
were  associated  the  worship  of  the  hearth  and  probably 
the  cult  of  ancestors  ;  equipped  with  some  knowledge 
of  agriculture,  which  was  assisted  by  magico-religious 
agrarian  rites  such  as  the  Thesmophoria,  and  con- 
secrated by  the  cult  of  a  corn-goddess  or  earth- 
goddess  ;  endowed  with  a  religion  of  the  theistic  type 
already  somewhat  advanced,  but  still  cherishing  many 
beliefs  of  the  ''animistic"  or  pre-animistic  point  of 
view.  The  sky-god  Zeus  was  also  in  this  aboriginal 
period  a  god  of  vegetation,  and,  as  such,  capable  of 
functionising  as  a  chthonian  deity,  so  that  the  later 
distinction  between  Olympian  and  chthonian  rites 
and  cults  is  not  to  be  regarded  generally  as  a  distinc- 
tion between  the  North- Aryan  and  the  Mediterranean 
strains  in  Greek   religion.      The  high  god  was  also 


22         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

already  moralised.     Political  life,  with  the  germs  of 
civic  institutions,  was  already  beginning,  and  certain 
deities  were  taking  on  a  political  character.     Rehgion 
had   advanced  beyond  the  purely  tribal  stage,   and 
certain  tribes  had  deities  like  Zeus  and  Poseidon  and 
Apollo  in  common.     In  the  social-religious  institu- 
tions  connected   with   the   tribal  life  there  is  little 
evidence  of  savagery.     There  is  no  proof  of  totemistic 
organisation  ;  for  the  zealots  of  totemism  have  wrongly 
interpreted  certain  phenomena  that  arose,  not  from 
totemism,  but  from  theriolatry  or  the  theriomorphic 
imagination  of  the  deity,  phenomena  which  are  found 
at  most  stages  of  religion  concurrently  with  anthropo- 
morphism.    Neither  is  there  any  clear  evidence  of 
those   institutions   that    specially   belong   to   savage 
tribal  society — the  compulsory  initiation  of  the  boys 
into  tribal  mysteries,  or  the  painful  ceremonies  im- 
posed upon  girls  on  arrival  at  puberty.     The  great 
mysteries   of    historic    Greece,    being   devoted   to   a 
great  goddess,  were  probably  of  Mediterranean  rather 
than  North-Aryan   origin;    the   incoming  Achasans 
and   their   kindred  tribes  may  have  possessed  tribal 
mysteries,^  such  as  those  of  Trophonios  at  Lebadeia 
and  of  Dryops,  the  eponymous  ancestor  of  one  of  the 
oldest  tribes  of  this  group,  but  we  have  no  record  or 
hint  of  compulsory  or  general  initiation.    The  puberty- 
ceremonies  of  girls,  where  we  have  any  ancient  ritual- 
evidence  such  as  that  of  the  Attic  Brauronia,  appear 
to   have   been   harmless   and  free  from   the   cruelty 

1  For  the  question  of  puberty-mysteries  among  other  Aryan  races, 
see  Oldenberg,  Religion  des  Veda,  p.  466,  for  the  Upanayana  initiation. 


INTRODUCTORY   SKETCH  23 

and  superstitions  that  burden  these  in  most  savage 
societies.  From  this  we  may  conclude  that  in  the 
proto-Hellenic  period  the  tyranny  of  the  tribal  system 
had  relaxed  and  the  independent  family  life  had 
gathered  strength. 

As  regards  ritual,  the  Northern  tribes  had  not  yet 
raised  the  temple  or  carved  the  idol ;  the  holy  place, 
in  some  way  fenced  off,  might  be  a  tree,  or  grove,  or 
cave,  with  a  pillar  or  stone  altar  marking  the  presence 
of  the  deity,  for  pillar-cult  was  not  a  specially 
Mediterranean  product.  The  hymn,  the  choral  dance, 
and  the  prayer  were  already  developed,  and  the  wor- 
ship was  partly  magical,  partly — perhaps  mainly — 
religious. 

As  regards  sacrifice,  the  two  types  of  the  blood- 
offering  and  the  bloodless  were  prevalent,  and  the 
sacrifice  was  not  merely  regarded  as  a  gift  to  the 
god,  but  the  germs  of  the  sacramental  idea  might 
be  found  in  it.  Human  sacrifice  was  occasionally 
in  vogue,  though  probably  the  progressive  spirit  of 
the  societies  was  already  in  protest  against  it.  Some 
ritual  of  purification  from  disease,  death,  childbirth, 
was  doubtless  part  of  the  Northern  tradition,  as  the 
antiquity  of  Apollo's  title  ^o7l3os  might  suggest ;  but 
the  cathartic  system  sat  lightly  upon  this  people,  and 
the  idea  of  the  dangerous  miasma  of  the  homicide 
had  not  yet  developed,  as  we  may  safely  in  this  respect 
interpret  the  silence  of  Homer ;  and  for  this,  as  for 
other  reasons,  we  can  believe  that  this  virile  race  of 
men  of  clear  and  sane  mental  vision  was  not  in 
bondage  to  the  terrors  of  the  ghost  world. 


24         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

Finally,  we  may  discern  that  in  spite  of  the  pene- 
tration of  religion  into  the  whole  social  life  of  these 
peoples,  religion  was  the  ministrant  rather  than  the 
master,  the  priest  was  a  citizen,  the  servant  not  the 
despot  of  the  State,  and  the  societies  could  pursue 
their  paths  of  secular  progress  untrammelled  by  a  too 
powerful  religious  conservatism.  What  the  JNIediter- 
ranean  influence  could  instil  into  them  was  the  more 
intense  religious  life,  and  this  influence  began  to 
work  more  strongly  in  the  post- Homeric  period. 


LECTURE   11 

THE    RELIGIOUS    BOND    OF    THE    FAMILY 

The  only  type  of  family  organisation  which  is  re- 
flected clearly  by  the  earliest  Greek  cults  and  cult- 
legends  is  the  patrilinear,  which  reckons  descent 
through  the  father  and  tends  to  centralise  the  kins- 
folk on  certain  plots  of  land  around  the  patriarchal 
hearth  and  homestead ;  and  may  have  arisen  in  the 
more  settled  pastoral  period  and  have  been  finally 
cemented  by  the  agricultural  economy/  It  confronts 
us  in  the  earliest  records  of  every  Aryan  race,  and 
generally  in  the  Semitic  communities. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  assertion  has  been  confidently 
made  that  the  pre-Hellenic  Mediterranean  stocks  were 
matrilinear,  counting  descent  through  the  female. 
1  am  not  concerned  to  discuss  the  evidence  for  this, 
but  only  to  reassert  what  I  have  tried  to  prove  in 
detail  elsewhere,^  that  this  supposed  matrilinear 
system  has  left  no  clear  imprint  of  itself  upon  early 
or   late  Hellenic  cult.     The  contrary  has  only  been 

1  The  Bovlvyat,  the  "  ox-yokers  "  at  Athens  who  performed  the 
"  sacred  ploughings  "  for  the  State,  are  also  priests  of  Zev?  TeAetos,  the 
god  of  marriage.     See  my  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  i.  p.  L57,  R.  96c. 

2  "  Sociologic  Hypotheses  concerning  the  Position  of  Women/'  in 
A  rchiv  fur  Religio?iswisse}ischaft,  1904. 

25 


26         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

maintained  mainly  through  ignorance  of  the  modern 
evidence  concerning  the  rehgion  and  the  social  forms 
of  contemporary  and  ancient  matriHnear  societies. 
There  is  no  need  to  summarise  all  the  arguments. 
I  will  only  allude  to  two  points  concerning  which 
those  who  have  not  worked  at  all,  or  sufficiently,  at 
the  subject  are  still  liable  to  be  misled.  It  is  thought 
that  the  frequent  supremacy  of  the  goddess  in  these 
lands  is  the  reflex  of  a  matrilinear  society.  We 
would  judge  it  to  be  so  if  the  goddess  were  habitually 
worshipped  as  an  ancestress,  if  it  were  found  that 
matrilinear  societies  are  generally  ruled  by  a  queen, 
and  that  the  religious  ordering  of  these  societies  is 
in  the  hands  of  women  and  that  women  will  naturally 
prefer  a  goddess  to  a  god.  But  as  these  things  are 
not  generally  so,  the  supremacy  of  the  goddess 
craves,  or  at  least  admits,  another  explanation  which 
need  not  be  sociological  at  all.  Again,  the  hasty 
imagination  of  M'Lennan  has  brought  into  certain 
vogue  an  interpretation  of  the  story  of  Orestes'  trial 
as  involving  a  conflict  between  an  older  matri- 
linear system  which  the  Erinyes  represent  with  a 
later  patrilinear  which  is  championed  by  Apollo  and 
Orestes.^  He  has  misinterpreted  the  nature  of  the 
Erinyes  and  the  facts  of  that  cause  celebre,  and  caused 
others  to  misinterpret  them.  The  Erinyes  pursued 
the  shedder  of  kindred  blood  ;  they  had  no  prejudices  ; 
in  fact,  according  to  Hesiodic  legend,  they  came  into 
being  through  the  outrage  of  a  son  on  his  father ; 
under  either  system  of  descent,  the  mother  is  of  the 

1  Studies  in  Ancient  History  (1886),  pp.  211-215. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   BOND   OF  THE   FAMILY      27 

closest  kin  to  her  child  and  matricide  is  a  terrible  sin  ; 
but  they  would  have  pursued  Orestes  with  equal 
ardour  if  he  had  killed  his  father,  as  they  pursued 
Laios  ;  they  did  not  pursue  Clytemnestra  because, 
according  to  old  Greek  ideas,  the  wife  is  not  akin  to 
the  husband. 

Perhaps  the  earliest  phenomenon  discernible  in  the 
history  of  Hellenic  family  religion  is  the  worship  of 
the  hearth.     In  Homer  we  have  hints  of  this  sanctity 
— we  should  not  expect  more  than  hints  from  him — 
in  the  fact  that  oath  is  taken  in  the   name   of  the 
hearth,    and  that   the   suppliant   acquires   sacrosanct 
virtue   by   sitting   at   the   hearth.^      Hesiod    is    our 
earliest    voucher    for    the    personal    goddess    called 
'Ecrria.^     But  in  times  long  anterior  to  his  or  Homer's 
the  name  and  the  thing  were  associated  with  a  holy 
force  that  the  Romans  would  call  a  numen,  a  divine 
potency  animate  or  animistically  conceived,  that  rarely 
in   any  period   of  actual   cult   developed  a  concrete 
personality  of  its  own.^     We  have  reason  to  suppose 
that  in  the  prehistoric  past  of  many,  if  not  all,  the 
Aryan  races,  the  permanent  hearth  with  its  mysterious 
fire  and  stone  basement  was  a  holy  object ;  for  Greece 
at  least,  and  for  the  kindred  peoples  of  Italy  the  evi- 
dence from  the  prehistoric  period  is  fairly  clear.*    Being 
mysteriously  divine  and  itself  the  centre  of  the  family 
life,  worshipped  by   the   household    with    a   sacrifice 

1   Od.,  xiv.  158  ;  xix.  304.  2   Theog.,  458. 

3  Vide  my  Cults,  v.  pp.  345-365. 

4  Vide  Frazer,  "The  Prytaneum,  Temple  of  Vesta,"  in  Journal  of 
Philology,  xiv.  pp.  l63,  169-171  ;  Pfuhl  in  Athenische  Mittheilungen, 
1904,  p.  351. 


28         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

that  appears  in  Greece  to  have  been  of  sacramental 
type,  we  may  imagine  that  it  served  as  a  reUgious 
bond  for  a  system  of  family  duties  and  morals.  The 
records  that  are  explicit  concerning  this  are  few  but 
valuable,  although  in  dealing  with  them  we  cannot 
always  distinguish  what  is  early  from  what  is  late. 
We  see  that  in  the  pre-Homeric  period,  the  hearth 
was  the  basis  of  that  virtue  of  hospitality  that  pro- 
tected the  wanderer  and  the  suppliant.  We  may 
also  believe  that  in  the  same  early  age  emerged  the 
idea  that  the  hearth  was  pure,  for  the  same  reason  as 
an  altar  was  pure,  and  must  not  be  polluted  by  im- 
pure sights  or  actions.  The  earliest  evidence  for  this 
is  the  tabu-law  expressed  in  Hesiod's  Works  and 
Days}  And  this  special  characteristic  of  the  hearth 
divinity  may  have  suggested  certain  ritual  forms  of 
purification.  The  interesting  Attic  ceremony  called 
the  Amphidromia,^  in  which  the  members  of  the 
family  who  had  assisted  at  a  birth  ran  round  the 
hearth  with  the  new-born  child  in  their  arms,  must  be 
regarded  partly  as  a  purification  rite,  and  may  also 
have  been  inspired  by  the  idea  that  the  legitimate 
infant  should  be  duly  presented  to  the  holy  hearth. 
Again,  the  feeling  that  the  hearth  was  a  centre  from 
which  purity  radiated  may  be  discerned  in  the 
cathartic  rites  at  Athens,  whereby  the  ecclesia  was 
purified ;  it  seems  that  the  little  pigs  that  were 
used  for  this  purpose  had  first  to  be  carried  round 
the  hearth  of  the  city ;  and  charged  thus  with 
divine  influence  they  could  dispel  miasma  elsewhere. 

M.  733.  2  Cults,  V.  p.  S5i5. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   BOND   OF   THE   FAMILY      29 

Hence,  when  Hestia  emerges  into  a  real  personality, 
she  is  regarded  as  essentially  virgin. 

Now,  this  holy  place  in  the  midst  of  the  ancient 
"  Aryan "  home,  which  appears  not  to  have  existed 
in  the  warmer  region  of  Crete,  might  have  been  the 
centre  of  the  highest  family  morality  that  was 
developed  with  monogamic  institutions ;  and  we 
must  believe  that  it  helped  to  provide  a  religious 
sanction  to  the  family  tie.  We  might  expect  to 
find  the  holy  hearth  and  the  personal  goddess 
who  emerged  from  it  playing  some  part  in  the 
marriage  ceremonies,  but  the  cult-records  scarcely 
attest  this  at  all.  The  most  significant  expression 
in  literature  of  the  intensity  of  feeling  evoked  by 
this  family-worship  is  the  prayer  of  Alkestis  in 
the  play  of  Euripides :  ^  "  Lady-goddess,  as  I  am 
going  down  to  the  grave,  for  the  last  time  1  will 
make  my  prayer  to  thee :  foster  my  orphan  children, 
and  join  to  the  one  a  loving  wife  and  to  the  other  a 
noble  husband." 

But,  on  the  whole,  the  family-union  of  the  early 
Hellenes  and  the  morality  by  which  it  was  cemented 
were  safeguarded  by  the  higher  divinities  of  stronger 
personality,  Zeus  especially,  Hera,  Athena,  Apollo. 
It  is  noteworthy  that  this  people,  unlike  many 
others,  imputed  to  their  highest  god  the  minutest 
personal  concern  in  every  part  of  their  social 
organism. 

It  is  interesting  to  find  in  our  earliest  records  that 
the  national  god  was  associated  with  the  family- 
1  Ale.  1.  163. 


30         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

cult  of  each  householder.  Homer  himself  attests  the 
worship  of  Zeus  'EpKelos,  the  god  of  the  ipKo^  or 
garth,  whose  altar  stood  in  the  courtyard  of  the 
early  Hellenic  house,  round  which  all  the  kinsmen 
gathered  for  the  sacrifice ;  the  cult  endured  through 
the  ages,  and  by  the  fifth  century  b.c.  the  sacred 
name  could  be  used  as  a  synonym  for  the  abstract 
idea  of  kinship  itself/  The  high  god  was  present 
also  at  the  hearth  ;  he  himself  was  called  'Et^icmo?,^ 
and  under  the  shadow  of  his  power  the  personal 
goddess  Hestia  grew  up  and  was  adopted  as  his 
daughter.  Thus  not  only  was  the  whole  morality 
of  the  family,  so  far  as  this  was  given  a  religious 
colour  by  the  later  writers,  consecrated  by  the 
worship  of  Zeus,  but  he  himself,  in  spite  of  a 
licentious  mythology,  provides  through  his  marriage 
with  Hera  the  very  archetype  of  the  monogamic 
Aryan  marriage.  To  establish  this  interesting  fact 
we  must  study  the  religious  ritual  associated  with  a 
Hellenic  marriage,  so  far  as  the  fragmentary  evidence 
allows  us.  No  doubt  the  ceremonies  varied  in  the 
different  states ;  but  what  evidence  has  come  down 
to  us  reveals  little  of  barbarism,^  little  association 
with  magic  ^  compared  for  instance  with  the  evidence 
of  the    Vedic    ritual,^   and   it    expresses    a    stronger 

^   For  references  see  Cull'i,  i.  pp.  157-158. 

-  Herod.,  1.  44;  Scliol.  Aristoph.,  PluL,  395. 

^  The  form  of  bride-capture  survived  at  Sparta  (Plut.,  Lycurg., 
15),  of  the  "  Ehe-aufprobe  "  and  the  flight  of  the  bride  at  Samos. 

*  The  wearing  of  female  dress  by  the  bridegroom  at  Kos  was 
a  practice  inspired  probably  by  daimonistic  magic. 

^   Vide  Oldenberg,  op.  cit.,  pp.  462-465. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   BOND   OF  THE   FAMILY      31 

infusion  of  social-civic  sentiment  than  is  discernible 
in  our  own  marriage-service.  The  union  of  the 
highest  god  and  goddess  was  celebrated  annually 
in  many  parts  of  Greece  in  a  service  that  was  called 
the  lepo^  ydixo^,  or  holy  marriage,  some  of  the  details 
of  which  suggest  an  ancient  date  for  its  origin.  Now, 
the  fragment  of  Pherekydes,  contained  in  a  recently 
discovered  papyrus,  describes  the  momentous  event, 
and  in  the  narrative  Zeus  proclaims  that  it  shall 
serve  to  men  as  an  archetype  and  a  law  for  the 
ritual  of  human  marriage,^  and  a  later  authority^ 
vouches  for  the  fact  that  the  ordinary  bride  and 
bridegroom  performed  some  mimetic  representation 
of  this  t€/309  ya/xo9.  And  this  is  to  some  extent 
corroborated  by  the  newly  discovered  fragment  of 
Callimachus'  poem  on  the  love-story  of  Akontios 
and  Kydippe,  of  which  the  first  few  lines  allude  to 
the  ordinance  that  before  the  wedding  day  the  maid 
must  go  through  a  simulated  union  with  a  boy  in 
imitation  of  Hera  and  her  youthful  divine  lover.^ 
By  other  acts  of  worship  also,  by  sacrifice  and 
invocation,  the  high  god  and  his  consort  were 
most  intimately  associated  with  the  rite  of  human 
marriage.  A  curious  detail  is  recorded  of  the  pre- 
liminary sacrifice  to  Hera  by  Plutarch,*  who  declares 
that  before  the  victim  was  burnt  on  the  altar  the 
gall  was  extracted  and  buried  by  itself ;  he  explains 

1  Revue  des  Etudes  Grecques,  1897,  p.  3. 

2  Photius,  ii.  670  (Porson). 

3  Oxyrh.  Papyr.,  vii.  ;  Revue  des  Etudes  Grecques,  1910,  p.  26 1. 
^  Cong.  Prcec.,  p.  141  E. 


32         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

this  rule  as  dictated  by  the  desire  that  the  ensuing 
marriage  should  be  without  gall  and  bitterness.  And 
we  must,  I  think,  accept  his  explanation,  which  is 
quite  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  sympathetic 
magic  that  ruled  the  procedure  of  ancient  sacrifice. 

As  the  monogamic  patrilinear  marriage  generally 
implies  settled  life,  and  in  the  evolution  of  society 
the  natural  economic  basis  of  this  would  be  agri- 
culture, it  might  be  expected  that  the  ritual  of 
human  marriage  would  have  been  specially  con- 
secrated to  Demeter  the  corn-goddess.  We  are 
surprised,  therefore,  to  find  but  scanty  evidence  of 
this.  Only  an  inscription  from  Kos  proves  that  this 
goddess  played  some  part  in  the  marriage-service ; 
and  Plutarch  speaks  of  "  the  ancient  ordinance 
which  the  priestess  of  Demeter  applied  to  you,  the 
husband  and  wife,  when  you  were  being  shut  in 
the  bridal-chamber  together."  ^  It  may  be  that  her 
presence  was  recognised  also  in  that  interesting  Attic 
ritual  recorded  by  the  later  Paroemiographi :  it  was 
the  custom  at  Athens  in  the  marriage  ceremony  for 
a  boy  whose  parents  were  both  alive — such  being 
specially  chosen  for  religious  functions— to  carry 
round  a  basket  full  of  loaves  and  to  recite  the 
mystic  formula,  "  I  have  fled  from  evil  and  have 
found  a  better  thing."  ^  Plutarch  gives  an  explana- 
tion w^hich  seems  to  have  been  current,  that  the 
loaves  symboHse  the  civilised  life  of  the  higher 
family-system   as  contrasted  with  the  wilder  wood- 

1  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  iii.  82. 

2  ?\ut.,' Proverb.  Alex.,  l6;  cf.  Zenob.,  S,  98. 


THE   REIJGIOUS    BOND   OF   THE   FAMILY      33 

land    diet    when    man    lived    on    berries.     This    is 
interesting,    but   we   may   believe    that    the    bread- 
pannier  served  for  some  simple  sacramental  rite  such 
as  the  Roman  *'  confarreatio,"  in  which  the  bride  and 
bridegroom  eat  bread  together;   and  this  may  have 
carried  with  it  the  mystic  conception  of  union  with 
the  earth -mother  of  corn.     If  this  interpretation  were 
certain,  it  would  prove  the  sacramental  character  of 
Attic   marriage.     The  record    certainly   proves    one 
other  fact  of  interest  and  importance,  namely,  that 
Greek  marriage  was  not  only  a  religious  act — there 
is  ample  other  evidence  to  show  that — but  it  was,  in 
certain  places  and  at  certain  times,  assimilated  to  the 
liturgy  of  the  mysteries.     For  the  formula,  "  I  have 
fled  from  evil  and  have  found  a   better  thing,"  has 
a   mystic  tone   and    is    verbally   the    same    as    that 
which,    as   Demosthenes  tells   us,    was   used   in  the 
Phrygian  mysteries  of  Dionysos-Sabazios.^     Further, 
we  note  that  this  association  between  the  marriage- 
ceremony  and  the  mystery-rites  is  borne  out  by  the 
application  to  both  of  the  term  ''reXo^''  [reXerr^'],  '*end," 
"initiation."     Both  may  have   been   regarded   from 
the  point  of  view  presented  by  M.  van  Gennep  in  his 
Rites  de  passage-,    both   might  be  viewed  as  transi- 
tions  from   an   old    life   to   a   new   one  presumably 
better,  processes  in  which  the  initiate  renounces  or 
dies   to  the   old  and    is    reborn   in   the   new.       For 
the    history    of    the    ancient    Hellenic    marriage    it 
would  be  a  great  gain  if  we  could  determine  when 
first   that   mystic  formula  came   into   vogue   in    the 

1  De  Cor.^  §  259. 

3 


34         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

ceremony.  It  had  probably  been  used  in  pre- 
Christian  times,  and  St  Paul's  words  in  his  Epistle 
to  the  Ephesians/  to  ^vo-Trjpiov  tovto  fxeya  icTTL — *'  great 
is  this  mystery," — which  were  momentous  for  the 
marriage-theory  of  the  later  Church,  were  in  accord- 
ance both  in  spirit  and  in  verbal  form  with  earlier 
Hellenic  religious  custom  rather  than  with  Hebraic. 

Another  significant  phenomenon  observable  occa- 
sionally in  the  old  Greek  marriage-ritual  was  the 
previous  consecration  of  the  bride  to  the  local  god 
or  hero.  Thus,  in  New- 1  Hum  every  betrothed  maiden 
before  the  marriage  day  was  obHged  to  go  and  bathe 
in  the  river  Skamandros  and  to  offer  her  virginity  to 
the  river-god.  The  explanation  that  I  have  sug- 
gested for  this  rite  ^  is  that  the  maiden  was  regarded 
as  hereby  entering  into  bodily  communion  with  the 
divine  foster-father  of  the  land,  so  that  the  child 
born  subsequently  of  the  wedlock  would  have  in 
it  part  of  the  tutelary  spirit  of  the  god,  and  thus 
the  marriage  and  the  birth  would  bring  the  mother 
and  the  child  into  communion,  half-corporeal,  half- 
mystic,  with  the  people  and  the  people's  deity. 
A  similar  explanation  might  be  applied  to  the 
rule  recorded  of  Troizen,  that  the  maidens  there 
must  consecrate  their  hair  to  Hippolytos  before 
marriage,^  thus  putting  themselves  in  communion 
with  the  city-hero,  so  that  the  child  born  of  the 
marriage  might  be  considered  as  his  gift,  an  idea 
that  would  explain  such  names  as  "  Herodotos."     At 

1  V.  32.  2  Cults,  V.  423. 

3  Paus.,  2.  32.  2;  Eur.,  Hipp.,  1425. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   BOND   OF   THE   FAMILY      35 

Athens  the  maid  before  marriage  was  taken  by  her 
parents  and  presented  to  Athena  on  the  Acropolis, 
and  a  sacrifice  was  offered  to  the  goddess.^  Probably 
this  was  more  than  a  mere  gift  or  bribe  to  the  god- 
dess ;  for  we  may  rather  interpret  it  as  an  act  of 
communion  in  which  the  bride  at  this  period  of  her 
life,  which  was  fraught  with  danger  to  herself  and 
promise  to  the  State,  was  consecrated  to  the  tutelary 
deity  and  thus  drew  closer  her  ties  with  the  com- 
munity and  its  goddess.  Similar  records  might  be 
quoted  of  the  other  states  of  Greece,  and  we  can 
draw  the  general  conclusion  that  the  consecration 
of  a  bride  to  a  divinity  was  a  normal  part  of  the 
Hellenic  marriage  ceremony. 

Another  department  of  Greek  religion  whence  a 
religious  colour  was  reflected  upon  marriage  was 
ancestor-worship  and  the  tendance  of  the  spirits  of 
the  dead.  As  the  status  of  these  wholly  depended 
on  the  maintenance  of  the  rites  at  their  tombs,  and 
these  were  only  performed  by  members  of  the  same 
family,  a  strong  religious  motive  was  furnished  to 
matrimony,  that  a  man  might  propagate  lawful  heirs 
to  carry  on  the  irpoyovLKa  lepd,  the  ancestor-cults. 

Various  passages  in  Greek  literature  give  forcible 
expression  to  this  social-religious  idea,  which  appears 
more  prominently  still  in  Hindu  literature,  early  and 
late.  The  orator  Isaios  testifies  that  "  all  who  are 
going  to  die  take  forethought  for  themselves,  that 
they  may  not  leave  their  houses  desolate,  but  that 
there   may   be   someone   to   make   offerings   at    the 

1   Photius,  s.v.  irpoTcXeiav  rj/xepai^ 


36         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

family  tombs."  ^  Euripides  also  speaks  of  sons  as  the 
protectors  and  avengers  of  the  family  graves.^  And 
hence  we  may  explain  the  fact  that,  at  Athens  at 
least,  a  libation  at  the  family  tomb  or  an  offering 
to  the  Tritopatores,  the  fictitious  ancestors  of  the 
yei^T)  or  kinship-groups,  was  sometimes  included  in 
the  marriage  ceremonies.^  When  the  family  pos- 
sessed a  special  hero-cult,  the  marriage  might  be 
performed  in  the  hero's  shrine,  as  was  prescribed  in 
the  will  of  Epikteta. 

This  special  aspect  of  marriage  belongs  to  the 
narrow  and  lower  sphere  of  family  religion  ;  but  it  is 
that  which  has  probably  inspired  Plato  with  the  most 
exalted  conception  concerning  the  duty  of  marriage 
and  paternity  that  has  ever  been  embodied  in  ethical 
or  religious  literature.  In  a  passage  in  the  Laws  he 
tells  us  that  a  man  "must  cling  to  the  eternal  life 
of  the  world  by  leaving  behind  him  his  children's 
children  so  that  they  may  minister  to  God  in  his 
place." ^  No  such  spiritual  utterance  on  the  subject 
appears  in  the  Mazdean  sacred  books,  though  the 
sentiment  would  have  appealed  to  Zarathustra,  in 
whose  creed  every  good  Mazdean  ranked  as  Ahura- 
Mazda's  champion  and  every  good  Mazdean  must 
marry. 

Thus,  it  is  wholly  true  to  say  that  the  association 
of  marriage  with  religion  was  as    close   in   civilised 

1  Tlepl  Tov  'AttoXXoS.  K\r]p.,  p.  66  Bekk. 

2  Stobseus,  FloriL,  iii.  p.  78. 

3  j^sch,  Choeph.,  486 ;  Photius,  s.v.  Tritopatores. 

4  p.  773  E. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   BOND   OF  THE   FAMILY      37 

Greece  as  it  is  or  has  been  in  Christendom.  But  the 
rehgious  point  of  view  is  widely  different,  and  to  note 
the  difference  illuminates  the  gulf  between  the  old 
Hellenic  and  the  Christian  ideal.  While  the  latter 
looked  mainly  to  the  individual  soul,  and  its  main 
concern  was  the  gospel  of  purity,  the  social  religion 
of  Greece  looked  to  the  State  and  to  the  family  as 
a  unit  of  the  State.  Thus,  the  State-religion  and 
the  State-law  could  enjoin  marriage  as  a  duty.  At 
Sparta  a  man  was  punished  for  celibacy,  or  for  marry- 
ing late  or  marrying  badly  ;  ^  and  in  Plato's  common- 
wealth fines  were  imposed  on  those  who  remained 
single  past  a  certain  age,  to  be  paid  into  the  temple  of 
Hera,  the  goddess  of  marriage.^  A  fine  was  claimed 
by  the  same  divinity  from  the  Athenian  archon  who 
failed  to  enforce  the  rules  concerning  the  marriage  of 
orphan-heiresses.^  The  spirit  of  Greek  religion  is,  in 
fact,  entirely  in  accord  with  that  dictum  expressed  by 
Plato  in  the  Laws,^ — so  antagonistic  to  modern  senti- 
ment— namely,  that  a  man  in  his  choice  of  a  wife 
must  be  guided  by  the  interests  of  the  State,  not 
by  his  own  pleasure ;  and  Aristotle  in  his  Politics 
takes  the  same  view.  In  fact,  to  the  ethical  and 
religious  theory  of  the  ancient  classical  communities 
romantic  sentiment  would  appear  merely  egoism, 
and  the  religious  and  philosophic  ideal  of  marriage 
was  wholly  altruistic. 

A  further  question  arises,  whether  ancient  Hellenic 

1  Plut.,  Lycurg.,  \5,  and  Pollux,  8.  40. 

2  Laws,  p.  774  A. 

3  Demosth.  in  Makart.,  §  54.  *  p.  773  B. 


38         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

religion  agreed  with  our  own  in  this  respect,  that  con- 
jugal infidelity  was  considered  a  religious  offence.  A 
priori  we  might  expect  that  it  would  be  so  considered 
according  to  the  logical  law  of  ritual ;  for  any  com- 
pact consecrated  by  the  presence  of  or  the  appeal  to 
divine  powers  engenders  the  belief  that  these  will  be 
offended  by  its  violation.  But  the  only  public  record 
— so  far  as  I  can  find — that  has  come  down  to  us 
from  Greek  antiquity,  showing  that  a  religious 
penalty  was  inflicted  in  a  flagrant  case  of  adultery, 
is  that  law  which  Demosthenes,  or  the  pseudo- 
Demosthenes,  quotes  in  the  speech  against  Neaira, 
that  the  woman  td^^Qw  flagrante  delicto  was  excluded 
from  the  public  temples,  and  that  if  she  entered  them 
she  was  liable  to  any  punishment  short  of  death  ;  and 
commenting  on  it,  the  speaker  declares  that  its  in- 
tention was  to  keep  the  public  places  of  worship 
clear  from  pollution  and  impiety.^ 

It  is  probable  that  this  severe  law  prevailed  else- 
where than  at  Athens ;  for  the  female  philosopher 
Theano,  of  the  Pythagorean  school,  gives  it  as  a 
formal  maxim  that  the  adulteress  was  for  ever  to  be 
excluded  from  temple  worship.^ 

Doubtless  the  popular  Greek  morality,  that  re- 
probated adultery  both  in  the  case  of  the  husband 
and  the  wife,  was  associated  with  a  certain  religious 
feeling,  though  only  a  few  utterances  of  the  higher 
literature  survive  to  attest  the  association.  We  have 
a  striking  phrase  in  the  Eumenides  of  ^^schylus : 
"  The  fated   bond  of  the    marriage-bed  guarded  by 

1  §§  85-87.  -  Clem.  Alex.,  Strom.,  p.  6l9,  Pott. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   BOND   OF  THE   FAMILY      S^ 

justice  is  stronger  than  an  oath,"^  and  in  the  same 
passage  Apollo  reproaches  the  Erinyes  for  their  in- 
difference to  the  sin  of  Clytemnestra  :  "  Verily  thou 
bringest  to  nought  the  pledges  of  Zeus  and  Hera, 
the  powers  of  marriage "  ;  words  which  involve  the 
idea  that  the  adulteress  and  murderess  had  sinned 
against  the  high  divinities  in  whose  name  the  marriage- 
rite  was  concluded.  The  Erinyes  defend  themselves 
by  limiting  their  own  jurisprudence  to  cases  of  kindred 
bloodshed,  and  maintain  that  the  wife  is  not  of  blood- 
kin  to  the  husband.  But  in  Homer  their  powers 
are  conceived  as  wider  than  this  ;  and  in  the  Ajax  of 
Sophocles  they  are  invoked  as  the  "  holy  ones  whose 
eyes  behold  all  mortal  sin  and  suffering."^  Hence 
we  need  not  suspect  the  passage  in  the  Electra  of 
the  same  poet  which  is  significant  for  our  present 
purpose,  in  which  the  Erinyes  are  spoken  of  as 
"  looking  with  concern  on  those  who  die  un- 
righteously and  those  who  are  betrayed  in  their 
marriage-beds."^  It  might  seem  at  first  sight,  on 
the  evidence  of  these  two  last  citations,  that  the 
Erinyes  were  popularly  regarded  as  guardians  in 
general  of  the  moral  law,  punishing  not  only  murder 
and  breaches  of  the  marriage-tie,  but  all  wrong  of 
man  against  man,  and  that  therefore  Greek  religion 
and  social  morality  were  coextensive.  But  the  facts 
do  not  appear  to  warrant  this  large  conclusion.  It 
is  true  that  the  powers  and  functions  of  the  Erinyes 
arose  in  a  great  degree  from  the  ancient  belief  in 
the  power  of  the  curse,  and  anyone  who  was  wronged 

1  1.  217-218.  -  1.  836.  3  i_  iU-115. 


40        HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

might  avail  himself  of  this  mystic  weapon.  But  in 
the  older  period  their  activity  seems  to  have  been 
evoked  chiefly  by  murder  and  possibly  by  incest ;  ^ 
in  the  later  period,  according  to  the  popular  view, 
they  were  little  more  than  executors  of  the  wrath 
of  the  slain  man  ;  nor  are  they  mentioned  among 
the  deities  whom  the  curse-tablets,  the  defijcionum 
tabellce,  invoke.^  Ordinary  sexual  offences  against 
the  morality  of  the  family  were  apparently  not  de- 
nounced in  any  public  or  private  commination.  Its 
religious  safeguard  was  the  appeal  to  the  State- 
divinities  of  marriage,  and  in  lesser  degree  the 
ancestral  spirits  of  the  family-cult.  The  passage 
quoted  above  from  the  Enmenides  agrees  with  the 
words  of  Theseus  in  the  Hippolytos  of  Euripides : 
"  Hippolytos  has  dared  to  violate  my  marriage-bed, 
paying  no  honour  to  the  solemn  eye  of  Zeus,"  ^  such 
an  imputed  act  dishonouring  at  once  the  high  god  of 
marriage  and  the  god  who  protected  the  father's  right. 
Even  in  the  later  Pythagorean  ethic,  in  spite  of  its 
alien  mysticism,  the  old  state-gods  of  Greece  were 
not  yet  wholly  dethroned  from  their  immemorial 
privilege  of  protecting  the  purity  of  family  life. 
Phintys,  the  female  Pythagorean  philosopher,  in  her 

1  As  regards  this  latter  sin  we  have  only  the  doubtful  evidence 
of  the  passage  in  the  Odyssey^  11.  280,  describing  the  woes  of 
CEdipus  brought  about  by  the  Erinyes  of  his  mother,  but  the 
ground  of  her  curse  may  have  been  her  own  death  and  his  parricide. 
A  late  Phrygian  inscription  shows  us  Apollo  Lairbenos  punishing 
a  sin  of  incest^  probably  not  as  a  social  offence  but  as  a  stain  on  the 
purity  of  his  temple  ;  vide  Ramsay  in  Hellen.  Journ.,  x.  p.  219. 

2  Fide  supra,  p.  7.  ^  i  885-886. 


THE    RELIGIOUS   BOND   OF  THE   FAMILY      41 

book  on  "  wifely  continence,"  ^  declares  that  the 
adulteress  "  who  brings  bastards  into  the  house  and 
kindred-circle  instead  of  true-born  supporters  of  the 
household,  dishonours  the  deities  of  birth  and  kindred, 
dishonours  also  the  deities  ordained  by  nature,  by 
whom  she  swore  that  she  would  unite  with  her 
husband  for  full  fellowship  of  life  and  for  the  produc- 
tion of  lawful  children. "  ^  Such  a  woman,  she  proceeds, 
is  excommunicate :  "  No  purification  can  avail,  so 
that  she  should  ever  again  be  able  to  approach  the 
altars  and  temples  of  the  gods,  pure  and  beloved  by 
them :  for  the  divine  power  is  most  inexorable  in 
respect  of  such  offences."  Doubtless  such  austere 
religious  ethic  was  above  the  standard  of  the  popular 
feeling ;  yet  there  was  much  in  the  popular  religion 
that  prompted  it.  The  Oeol  yeve6\ioi  whom  Phintys 
invokes  belong  to  it,  and  these  are  par  excellence 
Zeus  and  Hera.  And  who  are  those  whom  she 
strangely  called  ol  ^vaei  Oeoi,  "  deities  ordained  by 
nature  "  ?  The  context  suggests  that  they  are  the 
ancestral  spirits  of  the  family,  ol  Trarepe?,  '"  the 
fathers,"  by  whom  the  wife  swears  to  be  faithful ; 
and  we  have  seen  that  in  the  popular  ritual  of 
the  Greek  marriage  the  ancestors  and  heroes  had 
their  part. 

The  passages  just  quoted  express  the  social-religious 
value  of  continence  and  married  fidelity,  and  mainly, 
it  is  to  be  noted,  as  a  duty  of  the  woman  rather  than 
of  the  man.     Unchastity  in  an  unmarried  daughter 

1  Stobseus,  Floril.,  74,  §  60  (Meineke,  3.  64). 

2  This  reads  somewhat  Hke  a  weddinsc-service. 


42         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

could  not  normally  be  regarded  as  a  sin,  but  as  a 
social  wrong  to  the  family  ;  and  the  few  myths  that 
recount  cruel  punishments  inflicted  by  the  fathers 
for  this  offence  are  prompted  by  the  feeling  that 
the  daughter  ruined  her  chance  of  marriage  by  the 
loss  of  her  virginity.  A  political  religion  like  the 
Hellenic  could  only  commend  the  virtues  of  chastity 
from  the  point  of  view  of  social  utility,  looking  to 
the  purity  of  the  family,  the  birth  of  lawful  and 
healthy  children,  the  maintenance  of  family-cults. 
It  was  wholly  alien  to  its  spirit  to  exalt  virginity  as 
an  abstract  ideal  desirable  for  the  individual  soul 
above  all  other  goods.  It  might  occasionally  be 
required  of  the  priestess,  but  then  only  for  certain 
ends  of  state;  for  the  old  Hellenic  religion,  apart 
from  the  mysteries,  was  never  individualistic,  and 
its  objective  was  always  a  social  organism,  family, 
gens,  or  city.  Thus,  a  late  devotee  of  the  old 
Hellenism  like  Dio  Chrysostom  inveighs  as  forcibly 
as  St  Paul  against  the  morbid  vices  of  Greeco-Roman 
society  ;  but  not  so  much  because  of  their  intrinsic 
stain  or  impurity,  as  because  those  who  commit 
them  sin  against  "  Zeus  the  birth-god,  Hera  the  deity 
of  marriage,  Artemis  and  the  other  goddesses  of 
child-birth."^  He  inveighs,  that  is,  against  the  evil 
that  destroys  the  family  and  diminishes  the  birth-rate. 
And  lest  we  should  think  that  so  late  a  writer  is 
no  trustworthy  exponent  of  Hellenism,  we  should 
observe  that  the  spirit  of  his  sermon  agrees  with  the 
story  that  Peisandros,  the  old  epic  poet  of  Rhodes, 

1   Or.,  7,  p.  269  R   Dind.,  vol.  i.  p.  139- 


THE   RELIGIOUS   BOND   OF  THE   FAMILY      43 

brought  into  vogue  in  the  seventh  century  B.C.,  namely, 
that  the  unnatural  sin  of  Laios  was  an  offence  against 
Hera,  the  goddess  of  marriage,  who  sent  the  sphinx 
to  punish  the  Thebans  for  not  expeUing  him.^  We 
know  also,  from  the  orator  iEschines,  that  the  law  of 
Athens  punished  any  citizen  who  prostituted  himself 
with  loss  of  civic  rites,  and  this  included  excommuni- 
cation from  places  of  worship. 

The  exaltation  of  virginity  as  an  end  in  itself  is  a 
momentous  phenomenon  in  the  religious  history  of 
later  Mediterranean  society  and  early  Christendom, 
but  to  trace  the  evolution  of  it  takes  us  beyond  the 
Hmits  of  purely  Hellenic  religion. 

For  the  protection  of  other  sides  of  family  life 
the  Greek  polytheism  was  richly  equipped,  and  no 
religion  was  ever  more  deeply  concerned  with  the 
consecration  of  family  duties,  the  duty  of  father  to 
son  and  son  to  father,  of  brothers  to  sisters,  of  all  the 
kinsmen  each  to  the  other,  who  gathered  round  the 
same  altar  of  '*  Zeus  of  the  Courtyard."  In  fact,  we 
may  call  the  fulfilment  of  this  great  purpose  the 
master-work  of  Greek  religion.  And  the  whole  of 
this  province  belongs  pre-eminently  to  the  high 
god,  Zeus  himself.  At  this  point  it  is  interesting  to 
mark  the  contrast  between  the  old  religion  of  Greece, 
which  at  an  early  period  had  developed  the  faith  in 
concrete  personal  deities  of  highly  hidividual  type, 
and  the  vaguer  Roman  religion  which  dealt  rather 
with  "  numina "  and  shadow-powers.  The  family 
morality  of   Rome   was  mainly   safeguarded  by  the 

1  Schol.  Eurip.j  Phoen.,  1760. 


44         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

religious  regard  for  the  ancestral  spirits,  whose  wrath 
would  be  incurred  by  the  son  who  injured  his  father 
or  the  husband  who  wronged  his  wife.^  The  same 
idea  can  indeed  be  found  in  certain  passages  of  Greek 
literature — in  Plato's  Laws,  for  example,  where  he 
dogmatises  about  the  concern  of  the  spirits  of  the 
dead  in  the  maintenance  of  family  duties.  But  all 
the  morality  of  the  Greek  family  is  gathered  up  and 
centred  in  Zeus.  Pie  is  TeviOXio^,  the  chief  of  the 
0eoi  FepeOkiOL.  As  Harpcoo^  he  guards  the  father's 
right ;  as  'O/^dyz^io?  he  protects  the  tie  of  brothers 
and  of  other  near  kinsmen.  These  are  not  idle  titles 
of  poetic  fancy,  but  express  the  most  vital  beliefs  of 
Greek  worship.  The  injured  kinsman,  father,  son,  or 
cousin,  could  invoke  the  god  by  such  names,  and  the 
invocation  would  have  the  force  of  a  magic  spell  in 
arousing  the  divine  wrath  against  the  wrong-doer  ; 
in  fact,  these  names  are  veritable  words  of  power 
drawn  from  the  depth  of  the  religious  sentiment  that 
gave  life  and  force  to  the  ancient  family  system. 
Zeus  is  called  the  kinsman,  not  because  he  is  neces- 
sarily believed  to  be  of  kin  to  a  particular  family ; 
he  is  called  ITarpwog  by  Strepsiades  in  the  Clouds  of 
Aristophanes,  when  his  son  assaults  him,  not  because 
Zeus  is  the  real  ancestor  of  Strepsiades,  but  because  the 
injured  kinsman  or  the  injured  father  needs  the  aid 
of  Zeus,  and  in  order  to  compel  him  to  hear,  imputes 
to  him  the  human  titles  designating  the  relationship 
which  is  being  infringed,  thus  establishing  a   com- 

1    Vide  Wissowa,  Religion  und  Kultiis  der  Rbiner,  p.  187  ;   Plutarch, 
Fit.  Rom.,  22. 


THE   RELIGIOUS   BOND   OF  THE  FAMILY      45 

munion  of  sentiment  between  himself  and  the  god. 
It  is  this  that  gives  to  many  of  the  Greek  divine 
titles  their  singular  force,  and  to  the  study  of  them 
its  importance  for  the  comprehension  of  the  inner 
religious  feeling.  Thus,  we  can  understand  a  strange 
phrase  in  the  Chocphoroi  of  J^^schylus,^  where  Orestes 
appeals  to  Zeus  against  the  murderers  of  his  father : 
"  When  will  Zeus  '  Amphithales '  bring  down  his 
hand  and  rive  their  heads  ? "  ''  Amphithales  "  is  only 
used  in  Attic  Greek  for  the  child  who  has  both 
parents  alive.  Zeus  protects  the  rights  of  such 
children,  and  to  mark  his  sympathetic  relation  to 
them  is  himself  called  "  Amphithales,"  and  it  is  by 
this  title  that  he  will  be  invoked  to  avenge  the  child 
whose  father  has  been  wrongfully  slain. ^ 

The  popular  ethic  of  Greece,  of  which  the  Attic 
tragedians,  comedians,  and  orators  are  at  times  the 
true  exponents,  followed  closely  the  leading  of  Greek 
religion  in  respect  of  its  theory  of  family  duty.  The 
commandment,  "  Honour  thy  father  and  thy  mother," 
was  as  strongly  maintained  in  Hellas  as  in  Israel. 
According  to  Xenokrates,  certain  laws,  supposed  to 
have  been  promulgated  by  the  agrarian  hero  Trip- 
tolemos,  were  proclaimed  in  his  own  time  at  Eleusis, 
such  as  "  to  honour  one's  parents,  to  make  to  the 
deities  an  acceptable  offering  of  fruits,  not  to  injure 
animals."^  Another  echo  of  the  religious  ethic  of 
the   earlier   periods    of   Greek    society   is   preserved 

1  1.  394-S96. 

2  Vide  my  article  in  the  Classical  Quarterly,  19^0,  p.  186. 

3  Vide  Cults,  iii.  1 89. 


46         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

by  Pindar,  who  narrates  how  Cheiron,  the  good 
centaur  and  trainer  of  heroes,  gave  such  counsel  to 
Achilles  when  he  was  leaving  his  father  as,  "  Honour 
first  of  all  Zeus,  the  lord  of  the  loud-voiced  thunder, 
and  never  amerce  thy  parents  throughout  their 
destined  life  of  the  honour  due."^  As  for  the  higher 
ethic  of  the  philosophic  schools,  its  affinity  or  affilia- 
tion to  the  religion  is  a  question  of  much  labour  and 
complexity,  which  I  have  only  space  to  consider 
summarily  and  partially  in  regard  to  certain  moral 
particulars.  Plato,  the  most  religious  of  the  great 
philosophers,  while  indebted  to  Orphism  for  part  of 
his  ethical  and  psychical  system,  is  inspired  by  the 
higher  ideas  of  the  contemporary  polytheism  in  some 
of  his  moral  reflections,  especially  in  regard  to  his 
theory  of  family  duties.  This  is  most  prominent  in 
his  Laws,  the  dullest  and  worst  written  of  all  his 
treatises,  but  perhaps  the  most  valuable  for  the 
reflection  it  gives  of  the  moral  and  religious  world 
of  his  time.  One  or  two  passages  may  be  selected 
from  this  work  that  are  of  interest  for  the  present 
topic.  In  the  fifth  book  he  asserts  his  conviction 
that  *'  he  who  honours  and  reveres  the  tie  of  kinship 
and  the  whole  fellowship  of  the  deities  of  kinship 
which  is  engendered  by  community  of  blood,  will  be 
likely  to  have  the  birth-gods  propitious  for  the  rear- 
ing of  his  own  family."  The  Oeol  oixoyvioi  and  the 
deol  TeveOXiOL  mentioned  here,  and  the  moral  ideas 
that  they  stand  for,  are  drawn  directly  from  the 
religion  of  the  people,  and  they  are  here  made  the 

1  Pi^dh.,  6.  22. 


THE   REIJGIOUS   BOND   OF   THE   FAMILY      47 

basis  for  a  sermon  on  the  text,  "  Maxima  debetur 
pueris  reverentia."  ^  In  the  eleventh  book  he  discusses 
the  duties  of  the  State  towards  orphans,  and  the 
moral  reflections  have  again  a  marked  religious  colour :  ^ 
"  Let  them  fear  the  gods  above,  who  are  quick  to 
regard  the  loneliness  of  the  orphan  .  .  .  and  are 
kindly  to  those  who  deal  justly  by  them,  but  full  of 
indignation  against  those  who  outrage  the  orphan  and 
the  desolate,  for  the  gods  regard  the  orphan  as  the 
greatest  and  holiest  of  trusts."  The  passage  expresses 
not  only  the  philosopher's  individual  belief,  but  also 
the  deep  popular  sentiment  of  pity  for  children  which 
had  its  roots  in  the  family  religion.  It  is  to  be  noted 
that  at  Athens  orphans  were  under  the  special  care  of 
"the  archon."  We  can  estimate  the  moral  advance 
made  by  the  later  period,  when  we  remember  the 
words  that  Homer  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Andro- 
mache concerning  the  hardships  and  insults  that 
the  orphan  who  has  lost  his  father  must  expect  to 
endure.^ 

1  p.  729  C.  2  p.  927  A.  3  11^  22.  495-500. 


LECTURE  II J 

FAMILY    MORALITY    (CONTINUED)  :    TRIBAL    AND 
CIVIC    RELIGION 

The  duty  of  children  to  parents  is  that  part  of 
family  morality  which  was  most  emphasised  in  the 
ancient  communities,  and  at  Athens  certain  cases  of 
the  neglect  of  it  were  punishable  by  law ;  according 
to  Xenophon,^  by  exclusion  from  office  on  the 
religious  ground  that  a  man  who  was  guilty  could 
not  righteously  perform  the  sacrifices  on  the  city's 
behalf.  And  Plato,  following  again  the  lines  of 
actual  contemporary  law  and  religion,  gives  to  this 
duty  an  exalted  place  in  his  ethical-religious  system. 
A  striking  passage  in  the  Laws,^  too  long  to  quote, 
may  be  briefly  summarised  :  Neither  God  nor  man 
could  countenance  neglect  of  parents ;  the  aged 
parent  in  the  house  should  be  regarded  as  of  more 
honour  and  power  than  the  statue  of  the  divinity  ;  the 
curse  of  the  parent  is  more  powerful  than  any  other 
to  win  the  hearing  of  the  gods,  so  also  is  the  blessing 
which  he  invokes  on  his  children ;  and  God  himself 

1  Mernor.,  2.  The  legal  duty  towards  one's  yoi/et?  was  extended 
even  to  the  nurse  and  her  mother  and  father,  the  term  yovels  being 
applied  to  them  also ;  cf.  Isaios,  Or.,  8,  §  32. 

2  p.  930  E-932  A. 

48 


TRIBAL   AND   CIVIC   RELIGION  49 

rejoices  in  the  honour  that  the  children  show  the 
father  or  mother  or  father's  father. 

The  fifth-century  hterature  generally  is  eloquent 
on  the  same  theme.  Xenophon,  in  the  chapter  from 
which  the  above  citation  is  drawn,  makes  Socrates 
treat  ingratitude  to  the  mother  as  a  religious  offence. 
Euripides,  in  the  Herahleidai^  declares  that  he  who 
reverences  his  parents  is  "  dear  to  the  gods  both  in 
life  and  after  death  " ;  the  latter  part  of  the  phrase 
may  allude  to  the  doctrine  of  posthumous  rewards 
and  punishments  which  was  specially  invoked  by 
the  later  Orphic  and  Pythagorean  writers  as  a  sanction 
for  this  particular  duty,  or  it  may  possibly  refer  to 
the  belief  in  reunion  after  death  with  the  ancestral 
spirits  of  the  family,  the  same  belief  which  helps  to 
inspire  Antigone  with  fortitude  to  face  death  for  her 
brother's  sake. 

Many  of  the  passages  collected  by  Stobfpus  in  his 
Florilegmm  on  this  particular  moral  point  are  culled 
from  the  later  Pythagorean  literature,  and  it  is  in- 
teresting to  see  how  closely  they  follow  the  leading 
of  Plato  and  the  traditions  of  old  Hellenic  religion  ; 
and  this  is  the  case  even  when  we  should  least  expect 
it,  namely,  when  Musonius,  contributing  a  new  moral 
idea  to  the  world,  protests  against  the  prevalent 
custom  of  limiting  the  number  of  children,  by  ex- 
posure of  infants  or  by  procuring  abortion  or  by  other 
artificial  methods  such  as  were  sanctioned  by  Plato 
and  Aristotle ;  his  protest  is  based,  not  as  we  might 

1  The  verses  are  quoted  by  Stobaeus,  Florileg.,  78.  2  (Meineke, 
iii.  81),  as  from  the  Herakleidai,  but  they  do  not  occur  in  our  text. 

4 


50         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

expect  on  any  Orphic  ideal  of  purity  or  of  the  sacred- 
ness  of  all  life,  but  on  the  ground  that  such  actions 
injure  the  State  and  are  therefore  a  wrong  to  a  man's 
own  clan  and  a  sin  against  his  family-gods  and  Zeus 
the  god  of  kinship ;  still,  as  in  earlier  times,  the 
appeal  is  heard  to  the  deol  TrarpcooL  and  Zeus  'O/xdyi^to?. 
Christianity  adopted  this  moral  protest ;  but,  having 
at  first  little  sympathy  with  the  point  of  view  of  the 
old  political  religion,  based  it  on  religious  grounds 
that  were  wholly  different. 

Finally  Plutarch,  a  man  of  varied  religious  lore 
and  experienced  in  many  alien  creeds  and  systems, 
remained  true  to  much  of  the  tradition  of  the  old 
civic  religion  of  Hellas  and  expresses  on  this  point 
the  old  Hellenic  teaching  :  "  Those  who  have  fellow- 
ship with  us  in  Zeus  'O/x-dyz^co?  are  they  whom  we 
invite  to  our  weddings  and  birthday  feasts " ;  and 
again,  "Zeus  TevdOXio^;  executes  the  parent's  curse." ^ 

The  last  citation  is  an  illustration  from  the  end  of 
paganism  of  that  doctrine  which  was  strongly  alive 
in  the  Homeric  period,  which  retained  its  hold  on 
the  later  centuries,  and  to  which  many  passages  in 
Greek  tragedy  and  the  striking  passage  quoted  above 
from  Plato's  Laws  bear  witness,  namely,  that  the 
parent's  right  derives  much  of  its  religious  sanction 
from  the  parent's  curse.  Questions  of  the  ultimate 
origin  of  religious  and  moral  concepts  do  not  directly 
concern  the  present  inquiry ;  but  here  a  problem  of 
origin  may  be  touched  upon,  for  we  have  reason  to 
beUeve  that  the  belief  in  a  mystic  power  attaching  to 

1  P.  679  D.  Qiicest  Cojiviv.,  5.  5  ;  p.  766  C.  Amator. 


TRIBAL   AND   CIVIC   RELIGION  51 

the  curse  has  played  a  considerable  part  in  the 
shaping  of  some  morality  and  law,  and  was  part  of 
the  source  of  the  sanctity  that  attached  to  the 
parent's  claim.  The  primary  basis  of  the  parent's 
authority  was  no  doubt  secular,  human,  "  natural " 
as  we  say ;  but  we  know  that  in  many  societies  it  has 
been  aided  by  religion.  We  are  interested  to  dis- 
cover how  in  early  Hellenic  society  it  came  to  attract 
this  strong  religious  sentiment.  Did  this  come  to 
pass  through  the  influence  of  the  immemorial  rever- 
ence for  Zeus  the  father,  radiating  upon  the  relations 
of  the  human  family,  so  that  the  father  might  appear 
to  the  children  as  a  human  Zeus  ?  This  is  vague  and 
fanciful,  and  we  may  find  more  precise  causes  at 
work.  The  father  might  acquire  sacrosanct  auth- 
ority in  more  than  one  way.  As  the  family  priest 
he  officiated  at  the  altar  of  Zeus  'E/o/ceto?,  and,  as 
those  who  are  in  closest  rappoi^t  with  an  altar  ac- 
quire religious  prestige  and  virtue,  therefore  a  certain 
afflatus  from  Zeus  could  penetrate  the  father ;  also, 
if  injured,  he  could  appeal  to  the  family  god  by  the 
sympathetic  and  spell-name  of  "  the  father,"  a  name 
by  which  he  could  establish  religious  contact  between 
himself  and  Zeus  Ylarrjp  or  Darpwo?.  But,  what  was 
of  most  avail,  he  possessed  in  the  highest  degree  the 
terrible  power  of  the  curse.  Now,  in  its  earliest  form 
the  curse  belongs  to  magic  rather  than  to  religion — 
that  is,  it  may  exercise  its  blighting  effect  automa- 
tically without  the  aid  of  a  personal  god  or  spirit.^ 

1  Gidipus,  in  the  (Ed.  Colon,  of  Sophocles,  1.  1375,  appeals  to  his 
former  curses  to  come  to  his  aid  as  a-vfxfxaxoL. 


52        HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK    RELIGION 

And  it  appears  to  have  retained  something  of  this 
automatic  power  in  the  imagination  of  the  Greek 
communities,  who,  however,  were  obhged  to  associate 
it  exphcitly  or  impUcitly  with  their  behef  in  gods.^ 
It  differs  from  pure  prayer,  in  so  far  as  the  curse  is 
an  ebulhtion  of  personal  destructive  will-power, 
which,  when  directed  upon  a  divinity,  might  be 
imagined  to  constrain  him  against  his  will,  or  at 
least  to  arouse  his  reluctant  and  sleeping  power. 
Shakespeare's  words  about  curses — 

"  1  will  not  think  but  they  ascend  the  sky, 
And  there  awake  God's  gentle-sleeping  peace  "  ^ — 

contain  a  thought  that  was  deadly  earnest  for  the 
old  world.  Only,  the  Hellenic  mind  in  the  time  of 
Homer,  and  generally  in  the  later  period,  imagined 
them  rather  as  descending  into  the  earth  and 
awakening  the  Earth-powers — the  nether  Zeus,  Per- 
sephone, and  the  Erinyes — who  are  in  some  degree 
the  embodiments  of  the  curse  ;  for  this  reason  Althaia 
in  Homer's  story  smites  on  the  ground  with  her 
hands  when  she  wishes  to  arouse  the  curse-powers 
against  her  son.  Now,  it  was  natural  to  suppose  that 
the  elder  had  the  stronger  potency  for  cursing, 
because  generally  he  would  have  the  stronger 
"  virtue  "  or  will-force  ;  hence  we  see  the  psychologic 
basis  of  Homer's  pregnant  phrase,  ''  The  Erinyes  ever 
follow  the  lead  of  the  elder-born,"^  and  in  pro- 
portion as  the  elder  is  set  in  authority,  he  acquires 

1  The  fact  that  in  the  commination  formulae  of  Teos  no  deity  is 
directly  mentioned  is  no  reason  for  supposing  that  none  were 
present  in  the  mind  of  the  cursers  ;  vide  supra,  p.  7. 

2  Richard  the  Third,  Act  i.  Sc.  iii.  ^  //.,  15.  204. 


TRIBAL   AND   CIVIC   RELIGION  53 

more  "  virtue  " — what  anthropology  now  calls  *'  mana  " 
— and  more  power  to  curse. 

We  see,  then,  that  the  curse  is  a  non-moral  agency, 
just  as  the  blessing  of  Isaac  is  a  non-moral  automatic 
force.  And  it  only  comes  into  the  higher  view  of 
Cxreek  religion  because  it  undoubtedly  helped  to 
establish  the  sanctity  of  the  parent,  from  which  the 
domestic  morality  drew  its  nourishment.  The  curse 
might  indeed  be  a  real  hindrance  to  morality  ;  and 
in  some  of  the  old  Greek  legends  its  activity  may  be 
called  immoral,  as  were  the  curses  on  CEdipus,  on 
the  sons  of  CEdipus,  and  on  Hippolytos,  however 
much  Greek  tragedy  might  try  to  moralise  them.^ 
Higher  religion,  in  fact,  cannot  by  any  shift  find  per- 
manent place  for  the  curse ;  but  early  society  could 
make  gpod  use  of  it  for  its  law  and  ethics.  At  last 
the  parent's  curse  might  be  more  or  less  moralised, 
and  the  higher  moral  sense  could  be  reconciled  to 
its  power  by  the  conviction  that  no  natural  parent 
would  exercise  it  without  grave  cause.  The  whole 
commination  system  would  gain  in  righteousness  by 
transference  from  the  nether  deities  to  the  divinities  of 
heaven  ;  and,  occasionally,  in  regard  to  certain  particu- 
lars this  transference  may  have  been  attempted  by  the 
Greek  imagination,  and  the  righteous  curse  of  the 
parents  was  taken  up  and  executed  by  Plutarch's  Zeus 
TevedkLos  or  Plato's  high  God.  Yet  the  curse  could 
never  divest  itself  of  the  shadow  of  the  infernal  world, 
and  modern  society  is  inclined  to  leave  it  there. 

1   In  the  Euripidean  legend,  Poseidon  was  oblioed  to  fulfil  the 
curse  on  Hippolytos,  though  he  must  have  known  his  innocence. 


54         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

Finally,  we  may  trace  the  influence  of  this  domestic 
religion  in  one  other  institution  of  the  old  Greek 
society,  the  institution  of  slavery.  Throughout 
the  periods  of  its  history,  from  the  Homeric  down- 
ward, we  are  struck  with  the  comparatively  kind 
treatment,  often  cordial  and  affectionate,  which  was 
meted  out  to  the  slave ;  and  Hellenic  households 
were  in  this  respect  honourably  distinguished  from 
the  Roman.  In  the  Homeric  world  the  slave  had 
indeed  no  rights,  and  might  be  casually  killed  by  his 
master  or  mistress.  But  in  Athens,  by  the  fifth 
century,  and  probably  in  other  states  of  Greece,  the 
life  and  even  the  honour  of  the  slave  were  safeguarded 
to  some  extent  by  law.^  The  affectionate  tempera- 
ment and  warm  susceptibilities  of  the  Hellene  must 
be  reckoned  with  as  causes  here,  but  it  is  fairly 
certain  that  religion  also  did  good  work  in  this 
matter. 

When  the  terrors  and  the  power  of  the  ghost- world 
had  come  to  perturb  the  Greek  imagination,  as  they 
did  in  the  post- Homeric  period,  it  was  natural  to 
believe  that  even  a  murdered  slave  might  give  rise  to 
a  vengeful  and  dangerous  ghost,  and  this  would  give 
the  whole  community  a  motive  for  protecting  his  life 
by  law  ;  this  surmise  is  strengthened  by  the  clear 
evidence  that  purification  from  bloodshed  was  en- 
joined upon  the  slayer  of  a  slave,  for  the  fear  of 
ghosts  is  deeply  involved  in  these  purifications.^     At 

1  Eur.,  Hec,  291  ;  Isocr.,  Or.,  18.  52  {cf.  Schol.  ^schin.,  2.  87), 
the  slayer  of  a  slave  tried  in  the  court  em  IXaAXaStu). 

2  Cf,  Antiph.,  6.  87  ;  Plat.,  Laivs,  865,  c.  d. 


TRIBAL   AND   CIVIC   RELIGION  55 

all  events,  we  may  believe  that  the  domestic  religion 
of  the  household  did  much  to  ameliorate  his  lot ;  for 
we  know  that  he  shared  in  the  domestic  rites,  stand- 
ing with  the  other  members  of  the  family  round 
the  altar  of  Zeus  and  partaking  of  the  lustral  water 
with  them.^  Thus,  he  was  included  within  the  area 
of  the  influence  of  Zeus  'E/j/celo?,'^  and  a  certain  vague 
religious  sense  would  withhold  the  average  house- 
holder from  brutal  maltreatment  of  him ;  and  at  the 
worst  he  had,  like  any  stranger,  a  refuge  at  the  altar 
of  Zeus  'I/ceo-to?,  the  suppliant  god.^  The  Homeric 
slave,  such  as  the  pious  Eumaios,  performs  certain 
family  rites  in  the  absence  of  his  master.  And  later 
we  find  that  the  slave  as  a  member  of  the  family 
could  frequent  most  of  the  pubhc  temples,  except  a 
few  that  were  specially  closed  to  him  ;  certain  others 
were  even  the  exclusive  privilege  of  slaves,  when  they 
enshrined  cults  that  were  taken  over  from  a  con- 
quered population.  We  have  fairly  clear  evidence 
that  at  Athens  a  Hellenic  slave  could  even  be  initi- 
ated into  the  Eleusinian  mysteries  ;  for  a  fragment 
of  a  comic  poet  contains  the  words  of  a  slave  who 
remembers  with  gratitude  his  master's  kindnesses 
towards  him :  '•  Who  taught  me  my  letters  and  got 
me  initiated  into  the  sacred  mysteries."  * 

1  .Esch.,  Ag.,  1037. 

2  It  is  noted  by  Isaios,  Or.,  8,  §  l6,  as  an  example  of  extreme 
punctiliousness,  that  a  certain  householder  did  not  admit  his  slaves 
to  the  worship  of  Zeus  Kri^crtos. 

3  As  Euripides  says  :  "  The  beast  of  the  wild  has  the  rock  for 
his  refuge,  the  slave  has  the  altars  of  the  gods,"  Supp!.,  267. 

^  Meineke,  Fras.  Comic.  Grcec,  vol.  iii.  p.  626. 


56         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

Under  the  later  empire  a  kindlier  sentiment 
towards  slaves  might  be  inculcated  by  a  world- 
religion  that  proclaimed  the  idea  of  human  brother- 
hood. In  the  older  civic  societies,  so  far  as  religion 
could  ameliorate  his  lot,  it  was  rather  the  narrow 
religion  of  the  family  or  the  circle  of  kindred  into 
which  he  was  admitted  as  a  humble  dependant. 
But  at  one  important  point  the  religion  of  the  State 
came  to  his  aid,  in  assisting  him  to  procure  his  own 
manumission.  The  slave  who  had  saved  his  own 
price  out  of  his  allowance  —  and  this  was  often 
possible — could  lodge  that  sum  in  the  temple  of  the 
chief  god ;  the  priests  would  use  that  money  to 
purchase  him  from  his  master  or  mistress  in  the  god's 
name ;  the  god  would  then  set  him  free  and  guar- 
antee his  freedom  henceforth.^  This  does  not  mean 
that  the  religion  proclaimed  any  ideal  of  human 
liberty ;  the  process,  which  was  very  common  at 
Delphi,  is  merely  an  example  of  an  ingenious  applica- 
tion of  the  mechanism  of  ritual  and  temple-law. 

The  records  and  citations  given  above  are  suffi- 
cient for  illustration  of  the  closeness  with  which  the 
family-cults  were  interlaced  with  the  family  morality 
in  the  old  Hellenic  societies.  But  all  the  records 
are  inadequate  to  express  the  depth  and  intensity  of 
that  family  sentiment  which  these  cults  helped  to 
engender,  and  of  which  the  system  of  family  duties 
was  an  outcome.  Probably  no  people  has  ever  felt 
with  greater  fervour  the  sacredness  of  the  bond  be- 
tween brother  and  sister,  parent  and  child,  the  rever- 

^    Fide  my  Cults,  iv.  177-179. 


TRIBAL   AND   CIVIC   RELIGION  57 

ence  due  to  the  mother  no  less  than  to  the  father. 
A  poet  of  the  early  fourth  century  wrote :  "  For 
those  who  have  true  knowledge  of  things  divine,  there 
is  nothing  greater  than  the  mother " ;  ^  the  problem 
of  the  Antigone,  a  tragedy  unique  in  the  world's 
literature,  is  based  on  the  duty  of  sister  to  brother 
and  on  the  cult  of  Zeus  the  kinsman. 

A  full  account  of  my  present  theme  would  demand 
some  notice  of  the  practices  and  rites  connected  with 
the  cult  or  tendance  of  the  ancestral  spirit  or  de- 
parted member  of  the  family,  and  the  influence  of 
these  on  household  morality  and  sentiment  as  well 
as  on  higher  religion.  But  this  question  demands 
a  separate  treatise.  Those  who  study  the  facts  with 
care  will  probably  be  inclined  to  rate  that  influence 
highly.  They  may  arrive  at  the  conviction  that  the 
meal  round  the  family  tomb,  where  the  kinsmen  join 
in  fellowship  with  each  other  and  with  the  dead,  was 
one  of  the  strongest  religious  bonds  of  family  union  ; 
also  *'  that  the  feeling  of  the  divinity  of  ancestors 
quickened  and  intensified  the  feeling  of  the  ancestral- 
paternal  character  of  the  high  god."  ^  Zeus  himself 
becomes  narpwos  in  the  literal  sense  of  ''  the  divine 
ancestor  "  ;  or  the  human  ancestor  is  merged  in  the 
high  god,  as  we  hear  of  Zeus- Agamemnon,  Poseidon- 
Erechtheus. 

The  vitality  of  this  religion  of  the  family,  assailed 
as  it  was  by  the  later  ethics  and  philosophy  of  in- 
dividualism, remained  till  the  extinction  of  paganism  ; 

^  Stob.,  Florileg.,  79.  13. 

-   Hibberl  Jour?i.,  I909,  p.  428. 


58         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

and  its  moral  tradition  survived  that  extinction  both 
in  the  Greek  and  Roman  world,  and  has  become  a 
heritage  for  modern  civilisation  which  will  be  main- 
tained or  discarded  according  to  our  destiny. 

It  remains  to  survey  the  higher  manifestations  of 
this  religion  of  kindred  in  the  wider  organisations 
of  "gens,"  tribe,  and  city. 

Of  most  Greek  communities  it  is  true  to  say  that 
the  city  was  regarded  as  a  corporation  arising  from 
an  aggregation  of  tribes,  that  the  tribes  contained 
narrower  subdivisions  into  clans,  and  that  the  family 
was  a  unit  of  the  clan.  The  ordinary  classical  student 
is  familiar  with  the  classification  into  tribes,  phratries, 
or  subdivisions  of  the  tribes,  yivr^,  or  the  clans  whose 
grouping  constitutes  a  phratry.  The  many  complex 
historical  and  constitutional  questions  that  arise  about 
these  social  arrangements  do  not  concern  us  here,  or 
they  only  interest  us  because  we  find  that  religion 
played  the  same  integrating  and  consecrating  part  in 
respect  of  these  as  we  have  seen  it  play  in  regard  to  the 
smaller  organism  of  the  family.  Again,  we  find  that 
in  these  wider,  as  in  the  narrower,  circles,  the  religious 
bond  is  cemented  by  the  idea  of  kinship  whether  real 
or  imaginary.  As  regards  the  Attic  yeVo9  we  may 
believe  that  the  tie  of  kinship,  though  regarded  by  the 
later  writers  as  conventional  only,  was  in  early  days 
real  in  some  degree :  the  members  were  called,  even 
in  the  later  period,  ofioydkaKTe^,  "  those  who  had  been 
suckled  at  the  same  breast " ;  and  these  associations, 
when  we  come  to  know  of  them,  have  only  a  social- 
religious  character,    and  their  bond   is   the   common 


TRIBAL   AND   CIVIC   RELIGION  59 

cult  of  their  supposed  ancestor,  usually  a  hero  but 
sometimes  a  god.^  And  of  the  other  clans  that  we 
hear  of  in  other  parts  of  the  Greek  world  the  names 
are  usually  formed  patronymically  from  some  hero's 
name  and  suggest  the  same  type  of  gentile  cult. 
We  find,  too,  that  in  Attica  certain  cults  of  the  high 
gods  of  the  State  had  been  taken  over  from  the  family 
tradition  of  certain  yivr),  who  retain  the  privilege  of 
selecting  their  own  members  as  priests  for  the  whole 
city.  In  fact,  so  deeply  interwoven  was  the  ideal  of 
kinship  with  the  highest  religion  of  Hellas  that  those 
were  preferred  for  priests  who  could  claim  direct 
descent  from  the  deity  or  hero  whom  they  served ; 
for  in  some  inscriptions  the  priest  boasts  of  his  lineal 
connection  with  the  god.  This  phenomenon  in  the 
Hellenic  religion  is  parallel  to  the  claim  of  apostolic 
descent  in  the  Christian. 

The  larger  group  of  the  ^parpia,  the  association  of 
the  "  phratores,"  a  system  which  was  not  confined  to 
the  Ionic  States  and  had  descended  from  the  pre- 
Homeric  period,  was  obviously  artificial,  yet  was  no 
less  insistent  on  the  theory  of  kinship  or  descent  from 
a  common  ancestor  as  its  bond  of  union.  The  Ionic 
name  Apatouria,  the  gathering  of  the  "  Apatores,"  or 
those  ''who  had  the  same  father,"  points  to  this;  as 
also  does  the  fact  that  some  of  the  Attic  phratries 
had  their  own  special  cult  of  the  Tritopatores,  *'  the 
great-grandfathers  "  ;  and  we  find  that  the  "  phratores  " 

1  It  may  be  that  the  Attic  yej/eVta  was  a  funeral  feast  consecrated 
to  the  ancestral  spirits  of  the  yivr],  Herod.,  4.  26  ;  Bekker's  Anecdota, 
86.  20. 


60         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

of  the  elan  ealled  Eumeleidai  at  Naples  worshipped 
Eumelos  as  their  "  ancestral  god."^ 

Furthermore,  the  idea  of  kinship  was  forcibly 
applied  to  groups  of  which  the  principle  of  grouping 
was  obviously  non-consanguineous  but  purely  local 
or  geographical.  Even  the  Attic  denies  have  their 
eponymous  ancestors,  worshipped  with  a  cult  of  the 
gentile  type  ;  this  is  true  also  of  the  ten  Attic  tribes, 
all  named  from  mythic  heroic  ancestors,  whose 
statues  stood  near  the  council-chamber ;  and  we  have 
one  illustration  at  least  of  their  intimate  association 
with  the  most  ancient  family  religion,  an  inscription 
on  an  altar  showing  the  common  cult  of  Akamas,  the 
hero-ancestor  of  the  Akamantid  tribe,  with  Zeus 
"  Herkeios,"  the  god  of  the  household-garth.- 

More  interesting  still  is  the  religious  history  of  such 
transparent  fictions  as  the  names  of  heroes  and  heroines 
who  personify  a  mere  geographical  area,  such  as 
"  Lakedaimon,"  "  Messene,"  and  many  others.  Some 
of  these  are  by  no  means  frigid  inventions  of  the 
learning  of  later  mythographers,  but  can  be  proved 
to  be  early  products  of  the  popular  imagination. 
We  might  have  supposed  that  such  imagined  forms 
as  Lakedaimon  or  Zeus-Lakedaimon  and  Messene 
would  have  helped  to  free  religion  from  the  swathing- 
bands  of  the  gentile  concept.  But  this  was  by  no 
means  the  case,  for  these  shadow-personages  of  the 
territory  were  woven  early  into  the  genealogies  of 
the  leading  families  and  are  imagined  as  real  anees- 

^  Corp.  biscr.  Grcec,  5786. 
^  Coi'p.  Iiifscr.  Attic,  2.  l664. 


TRIBAL   AND   CIVIC   RELIGION  61 

tors.  After  this  we  shall  not  be  surprised  to  find  that 
even  the  trade-guilds  invent  an  ancestor,  by  whose 
cult  the  guild  is  held  together.  Thus,  the  guild  of 
the  Kepa/xet?,  "the  Potters"  at  Athens,  imagine  an 
ancestor-hero,  Kepa/xog,  ''the  Potter,"  in  whose  cult 
they  unite.  So  powerful  and  so  fruitful  of  social 
and  religious  results  was  the  idea  of  kinship  in  the 
ancient  Hellenic  world. 

We  see,  then,  that  the  clan-system  and  the  social 
groups  of  Hellas  were  organically  connected  with  the 
cults  of  heroes  and  human  ancestors  real  or  imagined. 
But  they  were  more  closely  consecrated  to  the  high 
divinities,  pre-eminently  at  Athens  to  Zeus,  Athena, 
and  Apollo,  the  chief  powers  of  the  Greek  political 
world,  but  elsewhere— it  might  be — to  Aphrodite  or 
Poseidon.  Hence  arose  the  cults  most  important  for 
the  social  and  ethnic  history  of  Greece,  such  as  Zeus^ 
<l>paT/3to9,  Athena  ^parpia,  or  'AwaTovpia,  Apollo 
and  Zeus  Ilarpojo^,  the  ancestor  of  the  clan,  or 
Poseidon  AcofiaTLrr]^,  the  god  "  who  builds  the 
house,"  the  pre-eminent  ethnic  deity  of  the  Minyan 
stock. ^  The  social  function  of  such  cults  was  to 
preserve  the  purity  of  the  civic  blood  against  alien  '' 
admixture. 

We  note  here  an  interesting  contrast  between  the 
ancient  Mediterranean  and  modern  Christendom  in 
respect  of  the  law  of  marriage.  Our  religion  has  in 
theory  no  gentile  prejudices,  and  favours  marriages 
between  aliens,  but  is   strongly  sensitive  concerning 

1  Fide  the  interesting  inscription  concerning  the  Delphic  phratry 
of  the  Labyadai  in  my  Cults',  iv.  p.  2S. 


62         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

the    laws    of    prohibited   degrees.     Hellenic   society- 
had  indeed  such    laws,  though   less   rigid   than   our 
own  ;  but   taking  always   the  gentile  point  of  view 
it  favoured  intermarriage  between   members  of  the 
same  clan,  in  fact  in  certain  circumstances  compelled 
the  nearest  of  kin  to  marry.     On  the  other  hand,  it 
was  most  sensitive  against  marriage  with  aliens,  pro- 
hibiting this  severely  unless  a  specially  favoured  and 
friendly  State  or  alien  individual  had  been   granted 
the   rights   of  intermarriage.     This   was  logical  and 
natural ;    for    marriage    implied    a    communion    of 
worship,  and   the  deities   of  kindred  desire  to  have 
communion  with  none  but  the  members  of  the  kin. 
Hence  these  deities  of  the  phratries  and  the  clans, 
Zeus,    Athena,  Apollo,  looked  with  jealous  care  to 
the  legitimacy  of  the   child   and   the   purity   of  its 
parentage,  when  the  father  brought  his  boy  or  girl  to 
the  phratores  and  "gennetai,"  to  enrol  them  on  the 
register  of  phratry  and  ''  gens,"  so  that  they  might  rise 
to  full  civic  status.     The  father  must  take  an  oath 
by  the  altar  of  Zeus  Phratrios,  and  the  phratores  who 
adjudicated  on  each  case  must  place  their  votes  on  the 
same  altar  before  dropping  them  in  the  voting-urn. 
A  heavy  fine  was  inflicted  for  the  wrongful  introduc- 
tion of  an  illegitimate  child.     The  same  ceremonies 
were  prescribed  for  the  adoption  of  a  child,  which 
was   only  legal  if  the  phratores  and  Zeus  Phratrios 
consented.     At  Troizen  the  maidens   must  dedicate 
their  girdle   to    Athena   Apatouria,  the   goddess  of 
the   clans,    on   the   eve   of  their   marriage;    for   the 
maidenhood    of  Athena   did    not   detract   from    her 


TRIBAL   AND   CIVIC   RELIGION  6S 

maternal  interest  in  the  legitimate  increase  of  her 
people.^ 

It  is  interesting  also  to  study  the  social  and  ethnic 
value  of  the  cult  of  Apollo  Ilarpojo^  at  Athens, 
who  was  revered  as  the  divine  '*  ancestor"  of  the 
Attic  clans.  The  son  who  had  been  newly  presented 
to  the  phratores  by  the  father  must  also  be  taken  to 
the  temple  of  Apollo  Patroos,  to  communicate  there 
with  him. 

The  archon-elect  was  scrutinised  before  he  could 
assume  office ;  and  one  question  was  whether  he 
possessed  the  worship  of  Zeus  Herkeios  and  Apollo 
Patroos,  and  where  their  shrines  were  to  which  he 
had  access.^  The  object  was  not  to  impose  any  dog- 
matic religious  test,  such  as  those  to  which  candidates 
for  office  in  modern  times  have  been  subjected,  but 
to  establish  his  legitimacy  as  full  Attic  citizen ;  the 
religion,  so  to  speak,  is  in  the  blood  of  a  certain  stock, 
and  is  therefore  proof  of  the  purity  of  blood. 

We  find  also  a  striking  phrase  in  a  speech  of 
Demosthenes,^  who  makes  the  speaker  call  the 
members  of  his  own  gens  the  "  clan-kinsmen  of  Zeus 
Herkeios  and  Apollo  Patroos."  Apollo,  being  the 
father  of  Ion,  was  the  flesh-and-blood  ancestor  of  the 
Ionic  stock  ;  and  the  non- Ionic  clans  of  Attica  had 
taken  over  his  cult  and  the  ancestral  fiction  from  the 
Ionic.     But  Zeus  was  never  imagined  as  the  ancestor 

1  The  old  Mediterranean  goddess  Ajihrodite  had  assumed  the 
patronage  of  the  phratries  and  the  title 'ATrarov/Ji;  in  some  Ionic  States; 
vide  my  Cults,  vol.  ii.  p.  657. 

2  Aristot.,  Atken.  Polit.^  55. 

3  Or.,  57,  §  67. 


64         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

of  any  branch  of  the  Attic  people ;  therefore  the 
phrase  "  kinsmen  of  Zeus  Herkeios  "  must  possess  a 
different  sense  from  the  other;  it  may  express  the 
feehns"  that  those  who  have  contact  with  the  altar  of 
a  god  establish  a  spiritual  kinship  with  him.  We 
notice  also  with  interest  that  the  yivo<;  or  clan 
borrows  the  cult  and  altar  of  the  family-god,  the 
god  of  the  garth,  in  order  to  maintain  the  illusion 
that  its  members  are  of  one  flesh. 

We  have  now  to  consider  the  constructive  part 
played  by  Greek  religion  in  the  life  and  organisation 
of  the  city,  the  evolution  of  which  was  the  highest 
achievement  of  the  secular  history  of  Greece. 

We  have  reason  to  suppose  that  the  very  origin  of 
the  polls  was  in  many  cases  religious.  We  have 
evidence  that  before  the  Homeric  period  the  exclusive 
tribal-religious  system  had  been  transcended,  and  that 
certain  tribes  might  share  and  maintain  a  common 
temple;  for  instance,  the  Delphic  Amphiktyony  had 
arisen  before  society  had  become  predominatingly 
civic.  The  temple  would  be  surrounded  with  sacro- 
sanct ground,  and  this  would  serve  as  a  rallying  place 
for  commerce  and  social  union.  Adjacent  habitations 
could  naturally  arise,  and  the  settlement  could  grow 
into  a  city,  just  as,  in  our  early  Middle  Ages,  a  town 
might  arise  under  the  shadow  of  a  monastery.  The 
name  "  Preston  "  points  to  such  an  origin  ;  and  names 
of  cities  such  as  "  Athena? "  the  settlements  of  Athena, 
Alalkomenai  the  settlements  of  Athena  Alalkomene, 
Potniai  "  of  the  mistress,"  Megara  "  the  nether  shrine 
of  Demeter,"  indicate  the  same  process  of  develop- 


TRIBAL   AND   CIVIC   RELIGION  65 

ment.  In  these  cases  the  temple  is  the  nucleus  of  the 
expanding  community.  But  also  when,  as  perhaps 
happened  more  frequently,  secular  motives  such  as 
military  security  prompted  the  foundation,  the  bond 
that  holds  the  city  together  is  none  the  less  religious. 
And  this  civic  religion  is  penetrated  with  the  idea  of 
kinship,  the  ruling  idea  of  Greek  polytheism.  The 
city,  with  all  its  various  and  often  heterogeneous 
elements,  was  regarded  as  one  family ;  and  it  is  im- 
portant to  note  how  much  of  the  civic  ritual  is  derived 
from  the  worship  of  the  household.  The  cult  of 
Zeus  'E/DAceto?,  as  it  had  been  adopted  by  the  clans 
from  the  individual  family,  was  also  taken  over  by 
the  "poHs."  We  hear  of  his  altar  on  the  AcropoHs 
of  Athens  in  Athena's  oldest  temple  ;  ^  at  Olympia 
an  altar  of  the  same  title  was  erected  on  the  ruins  of 
the  house  of  the  mythic  ancestor  Oinomaos.^  As 
the  family  confirm  the  sentiment  of  consanguinity 
by  partaking  of  the  common  meal,  so  we  find  in  the 
ancient  Attic  feast  of  the  Dipolia,  the  festival  of 
Zeus  the  city-god,  the  type  of  a  sacramental  family- 
meal  in  which  all  the  citizens  partake  of  the  sacred 
flesh  of  the  sacrificed  ox,  and  of  which  the  legend, 
as  preserved  by  Theophrastos,  suggests  that  this 
partaking  was  in  ancient  times  a  condition  of 
citizenship.^ 

Again,  as  each  householder  had  his  "  holy  hearth," 
so  the  city  sanctified  its  "  Hestia  "  in  the  Prytaneum 

1  Philochoros  in  Miiller,  Fragme7ita  Historicorum  Grcecorum,  vol.  i. 
p.  409,  frag.  146. 

2  Paus.,  5.  14.  7.  ^  Cults,  vol.  i.  pp.  56-58,  88-91. 

5 


66        HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

or  town-halL  where  usually  the  perpetual  fire  was 
maintained  on  which  the  continuous  life  of  the  State 
was  imagined  to  depend ;   and  there  is  some  reason 
for  supposing  that  this  rite  of  fire-maintenance  in  the 
town-halls   descended   from  the  days  of  the  heroic 
monarchies,  when  perpetual  fires  with  similar  ideas 
attaching   were   maintained   in   the    kings'   palaces/ 
In   fact,  the   study  of  the  Hestia-cults,  as   I    have 
tried   to   show   in   my    Cults   of   the    Gi^eek   States, 
reveals  more  strikingly  than  any  other  evidence  the 
organic  association  of  the  higher  and  broader  religion 
of  the  State  with  the  close  and  intimate  religion  of 
the  family.     Perhaps  the  most  salient  example  of  this 
is  an  archive  of  the  State-ritual  of  Kos,  in  which  the 
goddess  Hestia  appears  to  present  a  public  sacrifice 
to  Zeus,  the  city-god,  on  behalf  of  her  householders.^ 
Again,  we  receive  a  similar  impression  when  we 
note  the  anxious  care  and  solemn  organisation  that 
the  Greek  State  devotes  to  the  family  and  gentile 
cults  and   tendance   of  ancestors.     We  know  most 
about  the  Attic  Anthesteria,  a  three-days  festival,  of 
which  the  last  day,  called  the  Day  of  Pots  because  of 
the  pots  or  pitchers  of  cereal  offerings  consecrated  to 
the  dead,  was  purely  an  All-Souls'  celebration.     But 
we  have  the  right  to  beheve  that  the   Greek  com- 
munities  generally  had   similar   annual   institutions. 
And  in  seasons  of  peril  and  anxiety,  when  a  threatened 
State  consulted  the  Delphic  oracle,  the  response  of 
the  god  would  be  likely  to  include  an  injunction  to 

1  Op.  ciL,  vol.  V.  pp.  350-354. 

2  Op.  cit.,  vol.  V.  pp.  349-350. 


TRIBAL   AND   CIVIC   RELIGION  67 

maintain  most  zealously  the  traditional  rites  in  honour 
of  the  ancestral  spirits  ;  ^  and  a  common  form  for  the 
question  of  the  consulting  city  to  take  was :  '*  To 
what  god  or  to  what  hero  shall  we  sacrifice  ?  "  More- 
over, as  the  family,  the  gens,  and  the  phratry  had 
respectively  their  guardian  ancestral  spirits,  so  there 
emerged  in  the  haze  of  popular  belief  a  common  State- 
ancestor  for  the  whole  polis,  often  a  heroic  kinsman 
in  the  closest  union  with  the  chief  State  divinity. 

We  know  what  Erechtheus  meant  for  the  Athenians, 
the  snake-hmbed  earth-man  from  whom  they  all 
claimed  a  shadowy  descent,  the  fosterling  of  Athena 
whom  she  '*  set  down  in  her  rich  shrine," '"  and  whom 
they  placed  so  near  to  their  high  gods  Zeus  and 
Poseidon  that  the  gods  and  the  ancestor  borrowed 
each  other's  names.  We  know  what  the  Aiakidai 
meant  for  ^Egina,  the  hero-ancestors  by  whose  aid 
the  battle  of  Salamis  was  won,  whom  the  Athenians 
must  propitiate  before  they  ventured  to  attack  the 
island,^  and  whose  primal  parent  Aiakos  was  the 
high-priest  of  the  "  Hellenic  "  Zeus.  Wherever  the 
Locrians  settled,  the  hero  Aias  Oileus  was  their  un- 
seen guardian,  for  whom  they  actually  left  a  place  in 
their  ranks  when  they  marched  to  battle.^  Some  of 
these  ancestral  cults  enshrine  the  most  transparent 
fictions :  the  worship  of  Ion  at  Athens ;  of  the 
Phaeacian  Alkinoos  at  Corcyra,  who  shared  the 
temenos  of  Zeus ;  the  shadowy  Phoroneus  of  Argos, 

1  Cf.  the  oracle  quoted  by  Demosthenes,  IIpo?  Ma/capr.  p.  1072. 

2  Horn.,//.,  2.  549. 

3  Herod.,  5.  89.  ^  Conon,  Narrat.,  18. 


68         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

in  whose  memory  a  perpetual  fire  was  kept  burning. 
Yet  these  fictions  easily  passed  in  the  popular 
imagination  for  ancient  facts  belonging  to  the  history 
of  the  ancient  kindreds  whose  union  framed  the 
State.  And  the  Delphic  oracle  that  lent  its  powerful 
influence  to  the  maintaining  and  propagating  such 
cults  must  have  been  aware  of  their  social  value  for 
the  morahty  of  household,  clan,  and  city.  Moreover, 
many  of  these  hero-worships  made  for  political 
stability  and  the  maintenance  of  the  constitution 
and  ancestral  policy  of  the  State.  To  detach  Sikyon 
from  her  Argive  associations  Kleisthenes  must  drive 
out  the  spirit  of  Adrastos :  before  rejecting  the 
Athenian  in  favour  of  the  Lacedaemonian  alliance, 
the  men  of  Amphipolis  must  first  disestablish  the 
guardian-spirit  of  their  Athenian  founder  Hagnon. 
The  great  legislators  might  be  "heroised"  after  death  : 
the  spirit  of  Lykourgos  watched  over  the  constitution 
that  he  had  framed  and  bequeathed  :  the  founder  of 
the  city  might  be  buried  in  the  market-place,  so  that 
his  influence  might  inspire  the  counsels  of  the  State : 
the  Megarians  were  advised  by  the  oracle,  at  least 
according  to  their  interpretation  of  it,  to  admit  the 
spirits  of  the  dead  into  their  political  counsels.^ 

Nevertheless,  great  as  was  the  social  and  political 
value  of  these  cults  of  hero -ancestors  and  human 
benefactors,  they  are  overshadowed  and  absorbed  in 
the  religious  systems  of  the  "  poleis,"  by  the  higher 
products  of  polytheism.  It  was  not  to  any  hero 
or  mortal    ancestor  that  the  momentous  cult  -  titles 

1   Paus.,  i.,  43.  3. 


ITRIBAL   AND  CIVIC   RELIGION  69 

Polieus  or  ''  Polias  "  were  attached,  but  only  to  the 
highest  divinities  Zeus  and  Athena,  pre-eminently 
political  powers  ;  and  it  was  they  above  all  others 
who  inspired  political  wisdom,  and  who  alone  were 
worshipped  as  BouXatot,  deities  to  whom  the  members 
of  the  council  prayed  and  sacrificed  before  each  meet- 
ing. Certain  divinities,  such  as  Athena  and  Apollo, 
must  have  acquired  these  political  proclivities  in 
pre-Homeric  days. 

We  cannot  always  fathom  the  iimer  sentiment 
and  beliefs  of  the  average  individual  of  so  distant  a 
past ;  but,  looking  at  the  outward  acts  and  cere- 
monies recorded,  we  find  a  religion  unique  perhaps 
in  the  world  for  its  almost  naively  intimate  associa- 
tion with  the  whole  political  and  social  life  of  the 
people.  The  religious  atmosphere  is  all-pervading : 
the  law-courts  and  the  market-places,  the  council- 
chamber  and  the  town-hall  are  consecrated  places 
and  under  the  charge  of  certain  deities.  Important 
acts  of  State  were  accompanied  by  sacrifice ;  the  re- 
ligious oath  w^as  administered  to  magistrates,  jurymen, 
and  other  officials  ;  the  admission  of  the  youth  into 
the  ranks  of  citizens  was  a  solemn  religious  ceremony, 
when  the  Ephebos  swore  to  defend  the  land  and  the 
laws,  not  to  disgrace  his  arms  nor  desert  his  com- 
rade, in  the  names  of  Zeus,  of  the  war-god,  and  of 
the  ancient  goddesses  or  nymphs  of  the  soil.^  The 
original  union  of  the  villages  or  the  tribes  into  a 
single  city-State,  the  most  momentous  event  in  the 
history  of  each  community,  would  be  commemorated 

1   Pollux,  8.  105. 


70        HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

by  some  religious  festival,  such  as  the  ^woiKia-ia  at 
Athens,  "  the  festival  of  the  union  of  the  houses," 
founded  according  to  Thucydides  by  Theseus,  the 
creator  of  united  Attica,  and  consecrated  to  Athena. 
Or  the  national  union  would  be  consecrated  and 
safeguarded  by  attaching  some  significant  and  potent 
title  to  the  divinity  whose  concern  it  was :  this  may 
have  been  the  function  of  Artemis  Pamphylaia  at 
Epidauros  ;  this  certainly  was  the  significance  of  such 
titles  as  Zeus  Pandemos  and  Aphrodite  Pandemos  ; 
for  the  evidence  clearly  proves,  as  I  have  shown,^  that 
this  latter  appellative  does  not  allude  to  the  goddess 
of  common  and  venal  love,  but  to  the  high  political 
character  of  the  Ionic  goddess  in  whose  name  Theseus 
drew  together  all  the  "  districts  "  into  one  State. 

No  doubt  these  legends  often  reflect  historic  facts 
important  both  for  religion  and  politics.  The  incor- 
poration of  a  small  community  into  a  larger  State 
would  naturally  be  accompanied  by  the  transference 
of  certain  lepd,  religious  rites  and  services  which 
would  be  regulated  by  treaty  and  contract.  We 
have  evidence,  for  instance,  that  the  union  of  Eleusis 
and  Eleutherai  with  Attica  was  effected  partly  by 
means  of  a  religious  charter  regulating  the  ad- 
ministration of  the  mysteries  and  the  worship  of 
Dionysos  Eleuthereus. 

Greek  religion,  then,  is  absorbed  in  politics,  espe- 
cially at  Athens,  where  occasionally  even  a  partisan- 
colour  is  given  to  it,  and  the  older  Athenians  may 
have  tried  to  thwart  Themistokles'  democratic  mari- 

1  Vide  Cults,  vol.  ii.  pp.  Q5^-QQ^. 


TRIBAL   AND   CIVIC   RELIGION  71 

time  policy  by  the  argument  that  it  was  Hkely  to 
be  displeasing  to  Athena,  the  ancient  land-goddess.^ 
Their  late  descendants  dared  to  call  her  a  democrat 
and  to  erect  an  altar  to  Athena  "  Demokratia,"  ^  and 
no  doubt  it  did  not  seem  so  naive  to  the  ancient 
world  as  it  does  to  us,  when  a  city  of  Asia  Minor 
appointed  Apollo  as  a  magistrate  for  the  year,^  or 
when  the  late  reactionary  reformers  of  decaying 
Sparta  appointed  the  ghost  of  Lykourgos  as  inspector 
of  secondary  education/  Even  the  orator's  platform 
was  thought  worthy  of  the  presence  of  Zeus,  who 
took  one  of  his  cult-titles  from  it ;  so  that  Plutarch 
dares  to  call  it  ''the  common  shrine  of  Zeus  the 
counsellor  and  the  city-god,  of  Themis  and  Justice."^ 

The  outlook  of  these  political  cults  is  wide  and  at 
times  even  imperial,  yet  they  do  not  at  once  carry 
the  religion  beyond  the  horizon  of  the  old  family 
worship.  For  the  "  polis,"  the  union  of  the  kindreds, 
was  regarded  in  some  sense  as  the  family  "  writ  large." 
And  Plato  expresses  well  the  sentiment  of  his 
civic  contemporaries  when  he  dedicates  the  akropolis 
of  his  ideal  State  to  Zeus  Athena  and  Hestia,^  as  if 
the  two  great  civic  deities  would  naturally  establish 
the  new  society  around  a  family  hearth. 

The  idea  of  the  State  as  a  family  was  still  more 
vitalised   in   some   communities   by   the   belief  that 

1  f^ide  Plut.,  Fit.  TkemisL,  19. 

2  C.  I.  A.,  2.  1672;   cf.  3.  l65. 

^  Arch'dologische  Anzeiger,  1894-,  p.  124. 

*  Annual  of  British  School,  xiv.  p.  112. 

5  Hesych.,  s.v.  'Etti^t^z-iio?  ;  Plut.,  p.  819  E. 

6  Laws,  p.  745  B. 


72         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

one  of  the  high  deities  was  actually  the  aboriginal 
ancestor.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  this 
fiction  occasionally  represented  for  the  popular  mind 
a  physical  fact  of  early  history ;  that  at  Athens 
Apollo  was  called  Harpwo?,  "the  ancestor,"  and  at 
Delos  TeveTojp,  "  the  father,"  according  to  the  natural 
flesh-and-blood  significance  of  those  terms.  Athena 
only  escaped  being  the  physical  ancestress  of  the 
Athenian  people  through  the  strength  with  which 
even  in  early  times  the  dogma  of  her  virginity  was 
maintained,  and  the  myth  brought  her  as  near  as  it 
dared  to  being  the  actual  mother  of  Erechtheus,  one 
of  the  mythic  ancestors  of  the  Athenians.  Aphrodite 
was,  through  her  daughter  Harmonia,  the  ancestress 
of  the  Thebans,  and  therefore  the  Theban  women 
pray  movingly  to  her  as  "  the  first  mother  of  the 
race,  for  from  thy  blood  we  are  sprung."^ 

At  times,  however,  the  epithet  ITarpwo?  might  be 
understood  as  expressing  only  the  ideal  and  spiritual 
sense  of  divane  fatherhood,  or  perhaps  merely  that 
the  cult  had  come  down  from  immemorial  antiquity. 
The  title  in  the  local  cults  of  Zeus  does  not  always 
convey  a  belief  in  the  physical  descent  of  the  wor- 
shippers from  him  ;  and  certainly  the  Sicyonians  who 
called  Artemis  ITarpoja  could  not  have  done  such 
violence  to  the  common  Hellenic  belief  in  her  vir- 
ginity as  to  have  supposed  that  any  of  their  kindred 
were  literally  descended  from  her :  the  appellative 
must  merely  have  expressed  the  affectionate  sense 
of  kinship  between  the  goddess  and  her  people. 

1   .Esch.,  Sept.  c.  Thel).,  140. 


LECTURE  IV 

INFLUENCE   OF  THE   CIVIC   SYSTEM  OF   RELIGION    UPON 
RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT,    MORALITY,    AND    LAW 

This     prevailing    atmosphere    of    the    family    that 

pervaded   the   city   and  the    civic  reHgion  produced 

results  of  far-reaching  importance  both    for   religion 

and  morality. 

We  may  trace  its  working  in  the  religious  sphere 

first ;  and  what  is  said  of  Greek  society  will  be  more 

or  less  true  of  the  many  other  ancient  and  modern 

communities  that  have  had  or  have  the  same  system. 

It  narrowed  the  religious   horizon    and   the   area  of 

religious  fellowship  ;  for  worship  was  regarded  as  the 

special  privilege  of  a  certain  kin :    vno   ro)v   ttoXltcop 

TTperrei  TLfxaaOai  tov^  Oeov<;  ("  it  is  (only)  by  citizens  that 

the  gods  ought  to  be  worshipped  ")  is  Aristotle's  axiom 

that  best  expresses  its  spirit.^     To  such  a  religion  the 

missionary  impulse  is   entirely   alien,    and   therefore 

this  does  not  appear  in  Greek  history  until  the  Orphic 

propagandism   grew   powerful,  ignoring   the  barriers 

of  city  and  kin.     In  the  many  cases  where  the  State 

absorbed  alien  elements  of  population  with    diverse 

cults,  the  fiction  of  kinship  was  likely  to  arise  so  as 

1  FoL,  7.  9,  p.  1329. 
73 


74         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

to  satisfy  the  religious  sense ;  or  if  a  particular  tribe 
was  conquered  and  remained  on  in  a  servile  status, 
the   cult   might   be  left  in  the  hands  of  the  slaves. 
Again,  in  communities  such  as  the  Greek  "poleis" 
where  the   deities   are   pre-eminently   citizens — even 
Boreas  is  called  "  citizen  "  at  Thourioi — mixing  inti- 
mately  in   the   communal   business   and  life,  in  the 
social  amusements,  artistic  and  athletic  competitions, 
the  religious  temper  was  not  so  likely  to  be  dominated 
by  awe,  or  by  a  sense  of  the  ineffable  sublimity  and 
infinite  omnipotence  of  the  godhead,  as  by  a  sense  of 
the  kindliness,  neighbourliness,  the  good  fellowship  of 
the  divine  kinsmen.     It  was  this  that  made  possible 
both  the  licence  of  Aristophanes  and  at  the    same 
time  the  human  and  genial  grandeur  of  the  creations 
of  Pheidias.     This   is   the   average   truth,    although 
here  and  there  in  ^schylus  and  Pindar  we  catch  an 
echo  of  that  more  exalted  tone  which  is  familiar  to 
us   in    Hebrew   religious  poetry,  and    which  is  now 
beginning  to  be  heard  from  the  ruins  of  Babylon. 
Further,  the  civic  temper  of  religion  does  not  easily 
lend  itself  to  excesses  of  ecstasy  or  self-prostration, 
and  both  these  are  alien  on  the  whole  to  the  developed 
spirit   of  pure    Hellenism.     When   ecstasy  came  to 
it,  it  came  through  the  alien  Dionysos ;  and  at  first 
this  was   mainly  an    ebullition  of  physical  vitality ; 
and  Hellenic  o-oy^pocrvvr],  the  sober  or    "bourgeois" 
virtue  that  saves  the  State,  was  able  to  regulate  it. 

So  far  we  are  speaking  of  limitations,  which  may 
possess,  however,  certain  negative  advantages.  We 
may  also  mark  down  to  the  old  religious  theory  of 


THE   CIVIC   SYSTEM   OF   RELIGION  75 

Hellas  a  positive  advantage  which  was  to  reveal 
itself  signally  in  the  cosmopolitan  religion  of  the 
future.  The  old-world  civic  cults  quickened  and 
deepened  the  consciousness  of  the  kinship  between 
the  godhead  and  particular  human  groups.  When 
the  narrow  barriers  were  broken,  and  the  city  was 
subsumed  in  a  world-empire,  this  momentous  idea, 
hitherto  flowering  in  confined  plots,  could  spread  and 
germinate  over  the  world :  and  a  world  -  religion 
brought  out  the  conception  of  a  Civitas  Dei,  "  the 
Citizenship  of  God,"  itself  a  spiritual  emanation  and 
development  of  the  Grseco-Roman  Polis ;  and  in  this 
world -city  all  mankind  have  kinship  with  the  divinity. 
In  Greek  lands  this  idea  was  first  proclaimed  by 
Orphism,  which  seemingly  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  civic  system.  But  Orphism  developed  on  the 
lines  of  the  old  Thraco-Phrygian  religion,  which  no 
doubt  contained  the  faith  of  mortal  kinship  with  the 
divine,  a  faith  probably  assisted  by  a  savage  sacra- 
ment ;  and  within  this  aboriginal  religion  we  must 
suppose  that  this  idea  was  local  and  particular.^  A 
phrase  in  the  Axiochos,  a  poor  dialogue  attributed 
to  Plato,  but  written  under  the  inspiration  of  late 
Orphism,  is  worth  noting :  the  sick  man  is  comforted 
concerning  the  destiny  of  his  soul  after  death  by  the 
assurance  that  he  is  yepprjTr)';  tcop  6eo)v,  "  one  of  God's 
clan  " ;  the  words  are  mystic,  but  they  are  suggested 


1  We  cannot  suppose  that  when  the  rude  Bithynians,  near 
cousins  of  the  Thraco- Phrygians,  planted  the  cult  of  "  God  the 
Father"  in  Bithynia  and  Phrygia,  they  had  in  mind  his  universal 
fatherhood. 


76        HIGHER    ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

by  the  vocabulary  of  the  old  Attic  clan  and  phratry 
system. 

In  the  spheres  of  morality  and  law,  concentric  as 
they  are  in  early  society,  we  trace  interesting  results 
of  the  working  of  this  civic-religious  view.  The 
human  group  that  is  held  together  by  a  religion  based 
on  the  narrower  concept  of  kinship  tends  to  be 
governed  by  a  morality  that  we  call  *'  clannish  "  :  the 
clan  must  hold  itself  responsible  for  its  individual, 
and  individualistic  morality  cannot  yet  come  by  its 
own.  "  The  sins  of  the  fathers  are  visited  upon  the 
children,"  a  doctrine  shocking  to  the  modern  ethical 
conscience,  but  natural  and  inevitable  from  the  older 
point  of  view,  which  was  that  of  tribal  Israel  and 
tribal  Hellas.  And  the  sin  of  an  individual  could 
bring  a  curse  on  his  clan,  which  might  pass  through 
many  generations ;  thus,  even  in  the  fifth  century  it 
was  still  possible  to  propose  that  Pericles  should  be 
banished  from  Athens  because  of  his  descent  from 
that  Megakles  who,  nearly  two  centuries  before,  had 
committed  sacrilege  against  the  Cylonian  suppliants. 

Again,  from  this  clan-morality,  based  on  the  sense 
of  the  unity  of  life  animating  the  whole  group,  arises 
the  idea  of  the  moral  justification  of  vicarious  punish- 
ment ;  thus,  it  becomes  just  under  certain  conditions 
to  put  hostages  to  death ;  the  modern  savage,  in 
prosecuting  the  blood-feud,  is  content,  if  he  cannot 
slay  the  actual  slayer,  with  taking  the  life  of  one  of 
his  tribesmen ;  Hammurabi,  the  earliest  legislator  of 
civilised  Babylon,  condemns  a  man's  son  to  death  in 
a  special  case  for  his  father's  fault ;  the  Spartans  in 


THE   CIVIC   SYSTEM    OF   RELIGION  77 

the  fifth  century  invite  volunteers  to  go  to  the  Persian 
king  and  die  at  his  hands  in  atonement  for  the  city's 
outrage  on  the  Persian  heralds,  and  two  patriots 
offer  themselves  to  set  free  the  whole  city  from 
guilt/  If  we  examine  the  details  of  advanced  Attic 
law  concerning  homicide,  we  shall  discern  linger- 
ing traces  of  the  old  clan-morality,  the  communal 
responsibility  of  the  group. 

But  it  has  lingered  longest  in  religion,  which 
more  than  any  other  part  of  the  mental  life  of 
man  conserves  and  adapts  the  materials  of  ancient 
sentiment.  We  recognise  it  in  the  formulas  of  the 
curse  invoked  by  the  city  on  wrong-doers  or  by  the 
individual  on  himself:  "  May  he  and  his  descendants 
come  to  a  miserable  end,"  is  the  most  usually  re- 
curring phrase.  But  we  recognise  it  most  clearly  in 
one  most  important  manifestation — in  the  religious 
theory  of  vicarious  piacular  sacrifice,  the  sacrifice  of  a 
human  or  animal  life  for  the  community.  For  the  true 
moral  appreciation  of  this  we  must  distinguish  it  from 
the  scapegoat  ceremonies,^  which  are  logically  nothing 
more  than  a  magic  transference  of  sin  into  the  body 
of  the  man  or  the  animal  that  is  then  driven  away 
into  the  wilderness  and  not  necessarily  put  to  death. 
Of  vicarious  sacrifice  proper  there  are  two  piacular 
types :  one  that  is  wholly  non-moral,  in  which  the 
life  offered  is  that  of  an  alien  or  of  a  little-valued 

1    Herod.,  7.  134. 

"  This  does  not  appear  to  be  realised  with  sufficient  clearness 
in  Dr  Frazer's  long  and  interesting  record  of  such  ceremonies, 
Golden  Bough,^  vol.  iii.  pp.  93-134. 


78        HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

animal,  and  such  a  rite  seems  to  rest  ultimately  on 
the  savage  idea  that  the  offended  deity  demands 
blood  and  is  indifferent  as  to  the  quality  of  the  blood 
that  he  receives ;  the  other  is  the  higher  type  that 
alone  concerns  us  here,  in  which,  when  the  people 
have  sinned,  a  valued  life  is  offered  for  an  atonement 
which  may  be  efficacious  in  the  eyes  of  a  morally 
vindictive  deity,  because  the  life  is  closely  akin  to 
the  life  of  the  community,  so  that  according  to  the 
communal  view  all  die  and  atone  through  the  death 
of  their  representative  kinsman.  This  is  the  inward 
meaning  of  the  Greek  legends  concerning  the  volun- 
tary self-immolation  of  the  king's  son  or  daughter, 
a  noble  youth  or  noble  maiden ;  the  nobler  the 
kindred  of  the  victim,  the  stronger  is  the  tie  that 
links  it  to  the  community  and  the  more  potent  is  the 
efficacy  of  this  communal  atonement — most  potent 
when  the  victim  offers  himself  or  herself  of  free-will. 
Or  if  the  victim  be  an  animal,  it  may  be  possible  by 
a  fiction  to  identify  the  animal  with  the  life  of  the 
community :  thus,  in  the  legend  of  the  piacular 
sacrifice  to  Artemis  of  Brauron  in  Attica,  the  father 
offered  a  goat  but  called  it  his  daughter. 

This  higher  type  of  vicarious  sacrifice  is  a  heritage 
bequeathed  to  the  higher  religions  from  the  older 
stage  of  communal  ethics  and  psychology,  and  has 
never  been  reconciled  with  the  more  advanced 
theories  of  individual  responsibility. 

A  few  other  examples  are  worth  noting  of  the 
influence  of  the  family-religion  of  the  city  upon 
average    Hellenic    morality.     Their  close  association 


THE   CIVIC   SYSTEM   OF   RELIGION  79 

leads  at  once  to  this,  that  family-duty  and  State-duty 
could  not  be  imagined  to  clash  ;  celibacy  was  un- 
patriotic ;  the  best  citizen  was  the  married  man  with 
children,  he  could  best  speak  to  the  enemy  in  the 
gate ;  the  words  of  an  Attic  comedian  of  the  fourth 
century,  Timokles,  quoted  by  Stobseus,  reveal  the 
same  ethical  point  of  view :  "He  who  fears  and 
reverences  his  father  is  reasonably  the  good  citizen, 
and  is  able  to  do  most  harm  to  the  enemies  of  the 
State."  ^  For  the  same  reason,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
State-theory  concerning  sexual  morality  looked  only 
to  the  preservation  of  the  monogamic  marriage  and 
the  rearing  of  healthy  children  ;  it  could  not  recognise 
any  abstract  value  in  barren  chastity,  except  rarely 
for  religious  purposes  ;  and  the  gulf  between  ancient 
and  modern  morality  in  this  respect  is  well  illustrated 
by  those  stories  that  ascribe  to  Solon  the  public 
organisation  of  courtesans  and  impute  to  the  austere 
Cato  an  approval  of  such  a  system  as  a  safeguard 
against  the  danger  of  adultery  in  the  family. 

It  would  be  a  long  and  laborious  task  to  track  out 
the  varied  relations  between  the  religion  and  the 
philosophic  ethic  of  Greece :  the  correlation  is  most 
discernible  in  the  moral  writings  of  Plato  ;  most 
difficult  to  trace  in  the  Ethics  of  Aristotle,  which  is 
the  first  great  secular  treatise  on  the  subject  and  is 
for  the  most  part  constructed  without  any  obvious 
religious  idea  ;  yet  as  Kant's  Ethics  reflects  unmistak- 
ably the  traits  of  Protestantism  and  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, so   the   bright   and  human  philosophy  of  the 

1  Florileg.j  ed.  Meineke,  vol.  iii.  p.  83. 


80         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

Greek  thinker,  wherein  social  virtues  and  social 
graces  are  happily  blent  in  his  civic  ideal,  is  toned 
by  the  atmosphere  of  the  religion  of  the  Greek  Polis, 
that  fellowship  of  families  and  kindreds. 

We  may  now  consider  some  salient  examples  of 
the  consecration  by  religion  of  the  higher  civic  life 
and  morality.  The  primary  public  duty  was  to 
defend  the  city's  hearths  and  temples  ;  and  we  may 
suppose  that  to  fight  for  Athens  was  to  fight  for 
Athene,  if  at  least  we  can  trust  a  text  in  a  drama 
of  Euripides,  a  phrase  more  virile  and  of  stronger 
pitch  than  most  of  his  verses  :  "  O  sons  of  Athens ! 
if  ye  cannot  stay  this  stubborn  spear  of  the  men 
sprung  from  the  dragon's  teeth,  the  cause  of  Pallas 
is  overthrown  " :  ^  it  is  thus  that  Theseus  encourages 
his  men  in  the  great  battle  against  the  Thebans. 
The  0eol  TTarpoiOL  were  remembered  in  Nikias'  pas- 
sionate exhortations  before  the  last  agony  in  the 
harbour  of  Syracuse,  and  the  religious  appeal  doubt- 
less came  home  to  his  followers.  In  the  Babylonian 
religion  the  connection  between  the  deity  and  his 
temple  was  so  intimate  that  if  the  enemy  destroyed 
his  temple  or  city,  the  deity  appears  sometimes  to 
have  been  imagined  as  losing  all  powers  and  flitting 
impotently  away  like  a  bird  to  the  sky.  Now,  the 
divinities  of  Greek  polytheism  are  too  robust  and 
enduring  to  fear  such  extinction,  nor  is  their  life  and 
power  regarded  as  depending  wholly  on  their  favourite 
temple  or  State,  partly  because  each  of  them — as  soon 
as  we  come  to  know  them  at  all — is  found  worshipped 

^  Siipplices,  711. 


THE   CIVIC   SYSTEM   OF   RELIGION  81 

by  more  communities  than  one.  Yet  Athena  suffers 
with  the  sufferings  of  her  citizens  and  intercedes  with 
Zeus  to  avert  their  ruin. 

Neither  in  Greek  ethics  nor  Greek  rehgion  can 
we  say  that  courage  apart  from  its  patriotic  exercise 
on  the  battlefield  receives  any  recognition ;  and 
Aristotle's  very  narrow  definition  of  it  is  justified 
in  his  civic  theory  of  morality.  As  regards  religion, 
it  is  not  easy  to  find  either  in  cult-record  or  religious 
literature  any  direct  consecration  of  this  particular 
virtue.  Homer  might  describe  the  brave  man  as 
dear  to  Ares,  but  Ares  was  not  dear  to  the  Greeks, 
personifying  as  he  did  only  the  Berserker-rage  of 
battle,  which  was  a  temper  of  mind  always  uncon- 
genial to  the  average  Hellene.  Nor  can  we  discover 
any  morality  at  all  in  the  worship  of  Ares.  It 
is  otherwise  with  Athena:  she  stood  for  the  ideal 
of  tempered  and  disciplined  courage  devoted  to 
patriotic  ends  ;  the  dying  savagery  of  Tydeus — who 
fastened  his  teeth  in  the  skull  of  his  enemy,  as  does 
the  revengeful  spirit  in  Dante's  Inferno — disgusts  her, 
and  she  withdraws  from  him  the  boon  of  immortality 
which  she  had  promised  him  as  a  reward  for  his 
lifelong  valour.  The  story  comes  from  the  post- 
Homeric  epic,  but  we  can  find  at  least  one  passage 
in  Homer's  poems  expressing  the  belief  that  well- 
tempered  bravery  wins  her  regard  :  in  the  battle 
against  the  Suitors  she  only  gives  the  victory  to 
Odysseus  and  his  son  when  they  have  satisfied  her 
in  the  test  of  valour.     But  the  closest  association  of 

this  virtue  with  religion  was  attained  by  the  practice 

6 


82         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

of  awarding  heroic  honours  to  the  patriot  who 
fought  and  died  bravely  for  his  country.  Apart 
from  the  cults  of  mythic  heroes,  we  find  this  practice 
of  rare  occurrence,  and  the  earhest  examples  of  it 
not  earlier  than  the  fifth  century  b.c.  The  Greeks 
who  fell  at  Platasa  and  Marathon  received  heroic 
honours  en  masse ;  and  a  few  at  least  of  the  bravest 
of  the  three  hundred  Spartans  at  Thermopylae.  We 
have  had  strong  proof  from  Japan  of  the  social  value 
of  ancestor-w^orship  and  of  the  ennobling  of  the  dead  ; 
and  w^e  need  not  doubt  that  the  prospect  of  such 
posthumous  honours  would  make  the  strongest  appeal 
to  the  self-love  of  the  Hellene  and  w^ould  afford  a 
powerful  motive  to  conduct. 

With  patriotism  was  hnked  the  ideal  of  freedom 
or  the  immunity  of  the  city  and  the  individual  from 
alien  control.  Its  realisation  did  not  so  much  con- 
stitute a  special  virtue  as  create  an  atmosphere  in 
which  alone  all  virtue,  moral  and  intellectual,  could 
breathe  and  Hve.  This  idea,  to  which  Homer  first 
gave  voice,^  remained  in  full  vigour  till  the  civic 
system  began  to  decay,  when  the  free-thinkers  and 
the  philosophers  came  at  last  to  admit  the  possibility 
of  virtue  in  a  slave. ^  The  religious  consecration  of 
this  noble  civic  passion  was  the  cult  of  Zeus  Eleu- 
therios,  of  which  we  have  early  record  in  an  archaic 
inscription  of  Laconia,  but  which  received  its  chief 

1  "  Zeus  takes  away  the  half  of  a  man's  virtue,  when  the  day  of 
slavery  befalls  hhn  "  :   Od.,  17.  322. 

2  A  fragment   of  Euripides'    play   Melanippe  (Dind.,    514,   515) 
is  an  early  example  of  the  more  liberal  thought. 


THE   CIVIC   SYSTEM   OF   REIJGION  83 

stimulus  from  the  Hellenic  victories  over  Persia. 
Simonides  is  our  witness :  "  Having  driven  out  the 
Persian,  they  raised  an  altar  to  Zeus  the  Free,  the 
glorious  token  of  Hellenic  freedom."  The  same 
cult  was  often  instituted  to  commemorate  deliverance 
from  domestic  tyranny.  Have  we  here  merely  an 
example  of  the  eager,  self-inspired  spirit  of  the 
Hellene,  who  imputes  instantly  to  his  deity  a 
sympathy  with  his  strongest  passion  ?  Even  if  this 
were  the  whole  account  of  it,  we  would  not  therefore 
regard  such  cults  as  mere  religious  fictions,  coldly 
commemorative  of  facts  that  had  happened  and 
things  that  had  been  achieved.  The  Greek  even  of 
the  fifth  century  was  quick  to  believe  that  any  over- 
mastering emotion — such  as  sex-love,  or  the  love  of 
liberty,  or  the  feehng  of  pity — drew  its  life  from  some 
divine  source ;  the  theistic  expression  of  this  belief 
would  be  such  cults  as  Zeus  Eleutherios,  a  daimon- 
istic  expression  would  be  the  worship  of  Autonomia 
or  Eleutheria  itself,  which  we  occasionally  find.  But 
there  was  more  in  the  cult  that  we  are  considering 
than  the  mere  consecration  of  the  Greek  passion  for 
freedom.  We  read  that  a  necessary  religious  act 
after  the  expulsion  of  the  defeated  barbarian  from  the 
soil  of  Greece  was  the  purification  of  the  temples  that 
they  had  polluted  ;  and  that  for  this  purpose  sacred 
fire  was  fetched  hurriedly  from  Delphi.  Wherein 
did  the  pollution  consist  ?  The  deliberate  destruction 
and  desecration  of  the  Akropolis  of  Athens  was  an 
exceptional  act  of  policy  on  the  part  of  the  Persians  ; 
but  they  did  not  behave  thus  to  other  temples,  nor 


84         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

was  it  consonant  with  their  reUgious  principles  to  do 
so  ordinarily.  The  Greeks,  then,  must  have  felt  that 
their  holy  places  were  naturally  polluted  by  the  mere 
presence  of  the  barbaric  host  in  or  about  them  ;  and 
this  was  a  feeling  proper  to  the  tribal  and  family 
theory  of  religion,  which  logically  carries  with  it  the 
exclusion  of  the  ahen.  Therefore  such  cults  as  that 
of  Zeus  the  Free  were  suggested  by  an  essential 
rehgious  principle ;  and  the  morality  of  patriotism 
drew  from  a  religious  source. 

In  one  centre  of  this  cult^  we  find  the  goddess 
'Ofxovoio.,  the  goddess  of  civic  concord  and  fellowship, 
associated  with  Zeus  ;  and  it  is  interesting  to  observe 
the  various  ways  in  which  religion  was  able  to  foster 
and  safeguard  that  most  essential  virtue  of  the  civic 
life,  the  harmony  of  the  citizens,  whereby  the  blood- 
feud  that  was  wont  to  rage  between  the  independent 
clans  might  be  banished  from  the  circle  of  the  city. 
In  fact,  the  relation  between  Greek  religion  and  law 
and  morality  can  nowhere  be  so  fruitfully  studied  as 
in  tracing  out  the  records  of  Hellenic  law  and  senti- 
ment concerning  murder.  And  in  the  history  of  no 
other  society,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  can  we  follow 
out  so  clearly  the  evolution  of  a  quasi-secular  criminal 
law  from  religious  sources.  I  have  given  elsewhere  ^ 
an  exposition  of  this  ;  but  I  may  here  restate  what 
appear  to  be  the  leading  factors  in  the  development 
of  the  Greek  law  of  homicide. 

A  glance  at  the  enactments  concerning  this  vital 

1  Thebes,  C.  /.  G.,  l624. 

2  Evolution  of  Religion,  pp.  139-152. 


THE   CIVIC   SYSTEM   OF   RELIGION  85 

matter  in  civilised  Athens  of  the  fourth  century 
reveals  a  deep  religious  colouring;  and  doubtless 
we  should  find  the  same  in  the  codes  of  the  other 
States,  if  we  knew  them  so  well.  To  understand 
this,  we  must  be  able  to  penetrate  far  back  into 
the  ancient  days  of  Greece,  at  least  as  far  as 
Homer.  His  poems  present  us  with  a  society  that 
has  advanced  far  indeed  beyond  the  merely  tribal 
stage,  but  that  is  still  dominated,  more  strongly  than 
the  later  commonwealths,  by  the  old  clan-morality. 
For  him  and  his  contemporaries  murder  might  be  a 
sin,  but  could  never  be  a  crime,  that  is,  a  wrong 
committed  against  the  State  for  which  the  State  itself 
Avould  take  vengeance.  It  might  be  a  sin  to^slay  a 
herald,  because  the  herald  bore  the  protecting  badge 
of  Hermes ;  it  was  a  sin  to  slay  a  suppliant,  because 
the  suppliant  was  in  touch  with  the  hearth-goddess 
or  with  Zeus  the  guardian  of  strangers  ;  it  was  doubt- 
less a  heinous  sin  to  slay  a  kinsman,  an  act  that 
awakened  the  wrath  of  the  Erinyes  and  of  the  gods  of 
kinship.  The  ancient  legends  are  more  explicit  on 
this  point  than  any  clear  words  of  Homer,  who 
mentions  three  cases  only  :  the  parricide  of  (Edipus,^ 
and  his  persecution  by  the  Erinyes  without  any 
allusion  to  his  expulsion  from  Thebes  ;  the  story  of 
Epeigeus,  who  slew  his  cousin  and  fled  as  a  supphant 
— perhaps  for  purification — to  Peleus  and  Thetis;  '^  and 
finally  the  deed  of  Thepolemos,  who  dehberately  slew 
his  cousin  and  whom  his  own  kinsmen  intended  to 
put  to  death. ^     It  is  doubtful  if  this  would  be  the 

1  Od.,  11.  273.  2  //,^  16.  571.  ^  //.,  2.  665. 


86        HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

usual  punishment  in  Homeric  times,  as  the  kin  would 
thus  commit  the  same  grievous  act  of  shedding 
kindred  blood :  and  Plutarch  tells  us  that  actually  in 
his  own  time  in  Boeotia  the  slayer  of  a  kinsman  was 
not  put  to  death  but  driven  into  perpetual  exile. 
And  this  seems  to  have  been  the  case  in  regard  to 
Bellerophon,  who  accidentally  slew  his  brother,  of 
whom  Homer  vaguely  says :  *'  He  wandered  about 
the  Aleian  plains,  eating  his  own  soul."^  The  slayer 
of  his  kin  flies  from  society,  with  a  curse  upon  him, 
of  which  the  Erinyes  are  the  personal  expression. 
This  is  a  curious  example  of  the  punishments  of 
conscience  being  earlier  than  the  punishments  of  law  ; 
and  this  is  not  the  modern  conscience  of  civilised 
man,  but  the  tribal  or  family  conscience  that  thrills 
with  mysterious  horror  at  the  shedding  of  kindred 
blood,  but  is  not  at  all  stirred  by  the  ordinary  slaying 
of  an  alien ;  which  in  Homeric  and  many  other  early 
societies  is  neither  a  sin  against  the  gods  nor  a  crime 
against  any  State,  but  only  means  a  serious  affair  with 
the  alien's  kinsmen,  the  blood-feud  or  the  composition 
by  the  were-gild. 

The  sacredness  of  kindred  life  was  closely  associated 
in  Greek  societies  with  the  cult  of  Zeus  Meilichios ; 
the  god  whose  wrath  the  sinner  who  has  slain  his 
kinsman  must  avert,  and  who  therefore  in  that 
optimistic  faith  natural  to  early  prayer  is  called  "  the 
merciful,"  though  his  rites  were  gloomy.  There  is 
no  reference  to  such  a  god,  nor  clearly  to  such 
a   religious   idea,    in    the    Homeric    poems ;    yet   in 

1   //.,  6.  200. 


THE   CIVIC   SYSTEM   OF   RELIGION  87 

the   records  and   legends  about   him  there  is  much 
that   has    an    air   of  great   antiquity,    and   we   shall 
not  easily  believe  that  the  Greek  conscience,  brooding 
on    this    heinous    matter,    found    no    religious    ex- 
pression till  the  post-Homeric  period.      But  it  seems, 
to   have   been   in   this   period   and   not  earher  thatj 
that  momentous   advance  to  a  wider  conception  oi 
the   sin   of  murder  was   made,   whereby  the  whole 
free  life  within  the  city  was  safeguarded  by  the  sense 
of  the  sacredness  of  kindred  blood.     Theoklymenos 
in    the    Odyssey,   who    has   slain   a   member   of  his 
own  society — avhpa  /cara/cra?  e^^v\ov — had  merely  to 
fear  the   ordinary  blood-feud   of  the   kinsmen,    and 
is  welcomed    by  Telemachos   without   scruple   as   a 
desirable  companion.^      But  later  the  happy  fiction 
that  the  various  tribes  and  clans  aggregated  in  the 
Polls  were  ultimately  of  kindred   stock   did   signal 
service   here ;    so    that    the   slaying   of  any   citizen 
became  regarded  as  the  shedding  of  kinsman's  blood  ; 
the  first  testimony  to  this  advanced  thought  is  found 
in  the   poem   called   the    Aithiopis  by   Arktinos   of 
Miletus :  Achilles,  who  slays  the  worthless  Thersites 
— no  blood-relation  of  his,  but  still  a  member  of  the 
same  large  community — has  to  retire  from  the  army 
for  a  while,  to  be  purified  by  Apollo  in  Lesbos ;  the 
atonement  is  not  yet  secular,  but  religious  merely  ;  at 
the  same   time  it  attests  a  deeper  sense  than  had 
hitherto  prevailed   of  the  sacredness  of  life  within 
the   civic   area.      And   henceforth   any  civic   blood- 
shed is  an  offence  against  Zeus  Meilichios ;  it  is  he 

1  Od.,  13.  272. 


88         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

to  whom  the  Argives  in  the  fifth  century,  weary  of 
civic  massacre,  atone  with  cult  and  statue. 

Another  religious  —or,  at  least,  supernatural — force 
that  must  be  reckoned  with  in  any  account  of  the 
progress  of  Hellenic  morality  and  law  in  this  vital 
social  interest,  the  sanctity  of  human  life,  is  the 
reverence  for  the  departed  spirit,  the  fear  of  the 
wrath  of  the  ghost,  the  conviction  of  the  super- 
natural power  of  the  dead.  This  sentiment,  com- 
\bined  often  with  actual  cult  of  the  dead,  I  believe 
to  be  pre-Homeric ;  half-ignored,  perhaps  disliked, 
by  Homer,  it  asserts  itself  as  a  strong  and  con- 
structive social  force  in  the  post- Homeric  Greek 
communities.  The  anger  of  the  ghost  of  the  slain 
becomes  a  danger  to  the  whole  community  among 
whom  the  slayer  resides  ;  and  this  idea  is  independent 
of  the  narrow  limitations  of  the  old  morality  of  clan 
or  tribe ;  the  ghost  of  any  citizen,  or  even  of  a 
resident  alien,  becomes  a  local  peril  to  the  living ; 
therefore  society  will  begin  to  feel  indignant  at  the 
slaying  even  of  an  alien,  and  then  to  make  it 
punishable  by  law.  To  this  lower  religious  sense 
rather  than  to  the  stimulus  of  higher  theistic  religion 
I  would  attribute  the  great  achievement  of  Attic 
law,  the  protection  of  the  life  of  the  slave,  which  by 
the  fifth  century,  if  not  earlier,  had  become  legally 
safeguarded.  And  it  is  to  this  motive  that  the 
orators  appeal  when  they  address  an  Attic  jury 
on  a  case  of  homicide  ;  endeavouring  at  times  to 
secure  a  verdict  against  the  accused  by  threatening 
them  with   the  wrath   of  the   ghost   if  they  acquit 


THE   CIVIC   SYSTEM   OF   RELIGION  89 

him.^  One  of  the  most  interesting  examples  of  the 
working  of  this  belief  is  provided  by  the  closing  scene 
of  Euripides'  Hippolytos  :  the  dying  hero  forgives  his 
father  Theseus,  and  absolves  him  from  the  stain  of  his 
death  that  the  latter  had  unwittingly  caused ;  the 
father  bursts  out  into  expressions  of  admiration, 
gratitude,  and  delight  which  our  modern  sentiment 
misunderstands.  How  can  his  dying  son  absolve 
him  from  stain  ?  It  is  really  on  behalf  of  his  ghost 
that  Hippolytos  makes  this  promise :  the  ghost  shall 
in  this  case  forgive,  shall  not  haunt  his  father  nor 
drive  him  from  the  land. 

But  ghosts  were  mainly  vindictive  and  unforgiving  ; 
it  was  they  who  were  responsible  for  much  that  was 
inequitable  and  uncouth  in  the  Attic  code  concern- 
ing accidental  homicide  ;  the  person  who  slew  another 
unintentionally  and  quite  innocently  must  yet  flee 
from  the  land  for  a  season  till  the  kinsmen  forgave, 
and  could  persuade  the  ghost  to  cease  from  troubling. 
Therefore  ghost-fear  and  ghost-cult,  while  intensify- 
ing the  sanctity  of  human  life,  might  act  as  a  barrier 
against  progress  towards  a  more  equitable  law. 

Here  the  higher  religion  came  to  aid :  it  conse- 
crated the  awakening  moral  sense  that  motives,  inten- 
tion, and  circumstances  qualify  a  moral  action,  that 
not  all  man-slaying  is  equally  guilty,  that  justifying 
and  extenuating  facts  may  be  pleaded.  Such  cults  as 
that  of  Athena  K^ioiroivo^,^  the  goddess  of  righteous 

1  Cf.  Antiphon,  TetraL,  i.  3.  10. 

2  In  Sparta  associated  with  a  legend  of  justifiable  homicide,  the 
slaying  of  Hippokoon  and  his  sons  by  Herakles  (Pausan.,  iii.  15.  6). 


90        HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF  GREEK   RELIGION 

homicide,  such  cult-legends  as  those  associated  with 
the  Attic  law-courts,  inl  UaWaSCco,  named  after 
Pallas'  statue,  eVt  /\€\(f)LVL(p,  named  after  Apollo 
Delphinios,  where  pleas  of  accidental  and  justifiable 
homicide  were  respectively  tried,  show  Greek  religion 
sanctioning,  if  not  evoking,  a  higher  morality  and  a 
higher  law  concerning  murder.  I  have  suggested 
elsewhere,^  and  the  suggestion  still  seems  to  me 
reasonable,  that  religion  was  able  to  render  this  aid 
indirectly  through  the  growing  demand  that  was 
heard  louder  in  the  later  centuries  for  purification 
from  all  bloodshed,  however  the  taint  was  incurred. 
The  Apolline  worship  becomes  the  main  medium  of 
purification  ;  but  the  Apolline  priesthood  might  grant 
or  refuse  this  service,  whereby  alone  the  homicide 
could  regain  his  place  in  society,  according  to  the 
circumstances  of  the  slaying ;  but  such  power  would 
not  be  likely  to  remain  long  in  their  hands,  and  local 
courts  would  be  estabUshed  to  try  the  circumstances. 
The  secular  claim  of  the  State  begins  to  be  heard, 
and  yet  the  State-courts  that  tried  this  offence  retain 
the  deep  imprint  of  religion. 

This  advance  that  we  have  been  considering  marks 
an  inestimable  gain  for  equity  and  ethics  ;  and  it  was 
associated  by  certain  links  with  the  worships  of  Zeus, 
Athena,  and  Apollo.  We  can  dimly  surmise  that  the 
old  chthonian  religion  was  long  adverse  to  it;  the  realm 
of  the  earth-spirits  and  the  ghosts  cherished  rather 
the  grim  vindictiveness  of  the  old  clan-morality  that 
acknowledges  no  plea,   and  the   atmosphere   of  this 

1  Kiolution  of  Religion,  p.  144;  Cults,  vol.  iv.  p.  i^gs,  etc. 


THE   CIVIC   SYSTEM    OF   RELIGION  91 

dark  world  was  not  favourable  to  the  seeds  of  social 
progress.  Though  the  black  goddesses  of  vengeance 
might  here  and  there  be  imagined  to  turn  white,^ 
yet  such  powers  were  *'  hard  to  reconcile."  Themis, 
originally  the  double  of  the  earth-goddess,  must  be 
detached  from  Ge  and  attached  to  Zeus  or  Athena, 
before  she  could  stand  as  the  religious  impersonation 
of  righteous  law  according  to  the  higher  standard 
of  civilised  Greece.  The  great  ^Eschylean  drama  of 
the  trial  of  Orestes  presents  the  Erinyes  as  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  lower  morality  of  blind  vengeance 
as  against  the  higher  that  admits  the  plea  of  right 
and  justification. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  discern  here,  as  in  many 
other  examples,  with  what  pliancy  and  lightness  the 
brighter  religion  of  Hellas,  which  by  contrast  is 
sometimes  called  Olympian,  adapted  itself  to  the 
changing  needs  of  an  advancing  society. 

1  Paus.,  viii.  34.  1-2. 


LECTURE   V 

NATIONAL    AND    HUMANITAllIAN    RELIGION 

So  far  we  have  been  dealing  with  the  phenomena 
of  a  rehgion  which,  though  capable  of  responding  to 
the  higher  moral  aspirations  and  needs  of  an  advan- 
cing society,  yet  appears  narrow  in  its  extension  and 
straitened  in  its  ideals  by  the  limits  of  the  city 
area  and  of  the  society  founded  on  the  idea  of  clan- 
kinship.  If  this  is  indeed  the  whole  account  of  it, 
it  must  seem  a  paradox  to  us  who  consider  that 
humanism  is  the  special  product  of  the  Hellenic 
spirit.  And  it  is,  in  fact,  by  no  means  the  whole 
account.  Students  are  familiar  with  the  fact  that 
in  the  last  centuries  of  Hellenic  and  Gra^co- Roman 
history,  Greek  philosophy  and  the  Roman  imperial 
power  had  engendered  and  fostered  a  cosmopolitan 
ethic  and  a  theory  of  the  spiritual  freedom  of  man- 
kind, so  that  the  harvest  was  ripe  for  the  new  world- 
religion  to  reap.  But  it  is  less  generally  known  and 
admitted  that  the  seeds  were  already  germinating  in 
the  remotely  earlier  periods  of  Greek  thought  and 
religion. 

The  religion  of  the  Homeric  poems  is  not  merely 

92 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN   RELIGION     93 

tribal,  not  even  merely  civic.  The  high  god  and 
some  of  those  beneath  him  are  recognised  by  all  the 
different  tribes,  even  by  the  alien  races  of  Asia 
Minor.  Zeus  has.  in  fact,  almost  the  status  of  a 
world-deity,  and  his  name  becomes  at  times  a  synonym 
for  0609,  a  vaguer  designation  of  universal  godhead  ; 
and  many  of  Homer's  religious  utterances  could  be 
adapted  to  a  world-religion.  His  constant  appellative 
of  Zeus,  TTaTrjp  avSpcjv  re  6ea)i/  re,  "  the  father  of  gods 
and  men,"  was  certainly  not  interpreted  in  a  physical 
or  literal  sense.  It  is  true  that  in  another  passage 
the  swineherd  Eumaios,  the  highest  type  of  Homeric 
piety,  laments  that  "  Zeus  doth  not  pity  men  after 
that  he  hath  brought  them  to  the  birth."  ^  But 
neither  in  Homer  nor  in  Hesiod  nor  in  early  Greek 
literature  generally  can  we  find  any  theological  dogma 
concerning  the  divine  physical  origin  of  man.  The 
phrase  quoted  above  must  be  interpreted  in  a  spiritual 
sense,  and  it  reveals  to  us  the  religious  phenomenon 
that  is  observable  in  many  other  societies,  primitive 
and  advanced,  that  have  evolved  the  belief  in  personal 
deities ;  the  relations  between  men  and  the  high  god 
are  expressed  in  emotional  terms  borrowed  from 
human  kinship.  But  the  Homeric  phrase  has  this 
further  interest,  that  it  implies  that  this  loving  rela- 
tionship unites  all  men,  and  even  the  other  gods, 
to  Zeus. 

Is  this  broad  view  peculiar  to  the  great  poetic 
thinkers  of  this  early  age,  or  does  it  accord  with 
certain  facts  of  the  popular  religion  ?     The  numerous 

1    Oci,  '20.  201. 


94         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

appellatives  and  invocations  of  the  divinities  which 
appear  to  descend  from  an  ancient  period,  whenever 
they  seem  to  bear  a  local  or  ethnic  sense,  generally 
reveal  the  ancient  tribal  spirit  and  the  narrowness 
of  the  small  community.  But  the  most  interesting 
of  these  is  'OXt^/xttio?,  and  the  history  of  its  diiFusion, 
if  we  could  trace  it  with  certainty,  might  disclose  a 
certain  force  making  for  unity  within  the  religion. 
The  epithet  doubtless  arose  in  the  earliest  period  of 
the  Hellenic  migrations  from  the  north,  when  certain 
tribes  were  settled  in  the  north  of  Thessaly  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Olympos.  But  by  the  time  of 
Homer,  as  the  poems  are  witnesses,  it  had  lost  its 
local  significance  and  had  become,  we  may  almost 
say,  a  Panhellenic  invocation  of  the  supreme  god, 
and  we  may  also  believe  that  it  had  penetrated  at  an 
early  date  as  an  actual  cult-name  into  the  worship  of 
several  cities  that  were  far  distant  from  the  northern 
'*  Mount  of  God."  Thus  at  Athens  the  cult  of  Zeus 
Olympios  was  associated  with  a  dim  legend  concern- 
ing the  North-Greek  hero  Deukalion. 

The  title,  however,  which  in  the  later  historic 
period  best  expressed  the  ideal  of  a  united  Greece, 
an  ideal  realised  to  some  extent  by  its  religion,  but 
never  by  its  politics,  was  that  of  Zeus  Panhellenios. 
The  history  of  this  appellative  coincides  with  the 
history  of  the  term  Hellen.  We  know  that  this  was 
originally  a  name  of  a  tribe  or  group  of  tribes  settled 
in  or  near  the  Thessalian  Phthia  ;  that  their  ancestral 
heroes  were  the  Aiakidai,  Aiakos,  Telamon,  Peleus, 
Achilles ;  and  that,  according  to  the  legend,  a  branch 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN   RELIGION     95 

of  this  people  settled  in  iEgina.  The  legend  enshrines 
a  fact  of  early  migration,  for  in  ^gina  we  find  later 
the  immemorial  cult  of  Zeus  'EkXdvLos,  with  Aiakos 
as  his  high  priest.  Perhaps  by  the  seventh  century 
the  name  "  Hellen  "  had  passed  from  the  tribal  into 
the  national  significance ;  and  not  much  later,  we 
must  suppose,  the  name  Zeus  'EWdvLo?  was  enlarged 
into  "  Pan-hellanios,"  the  title  of  "  the  God  of  all  the 
Hellenes."  The  cult  became  prominent,  thanks  to 
the  patriotism  of  the  iEginetans  and  the  miraculous 
assistance  given  at  Salamis  by  the  Aiakidai,  in  the 
period  of  the  Persian  invasion,  when  in  their  hour 
of  greatest  need  the  Greek  communities  strove  to 
become  united.  And  the  Athenians,  hard  pressed 
by  the  Persians,  swear  to  the  Spartans  that  they  will 
not  be  false  to  Zeus  Panhellanios  and  the  cause  of 
Hellas.  But  it  seems  that  at  some  earUer  period 
than  this  the  Megarians  were  aware  of  the  cult  and 
of  the  legend  that  the  good  priest-king,  Aiakos,  had 
ascended  a  mountain  in  their  vicinity  and  had  prayed 
there  on  behalf  of  all  Greece  to  Zeus  Panhellanios 
for  the  salvation  of  the  peoples  in  a  season  of 
drought,^  just  as  Delphi  is  said  by  Pindar  to  have 
sacrificed  "  for  fair  Pan- Hellas  "  at  a  similar  crisis.'- 

Parallel  with  such  a  potentially  national  cult  were 
developed  genealogical  fictions,  such  as  Hellen  and 
the  sons  of  Hellen,  the  "  eponyms "  of  the  leading 
stocks,  fictions  of  some  value  for  the  religious 
sense  of  kinship  and  the  growing  consciousness  of 
nationalism. 

1  Paus.,  i.  44.  9.  ^   Pceans,  6.  62. 


96         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

This  sense  of  fellowship,  which  rested  also  on 
community  of  speech  and  social  usages,  w^as  fostered 
in  various  ways  by  religion,  even  in  the  times  before 
what  we  call  history  begins.  In  this  respect  the 
influence  of  the  great  national  games  of  Greece  has 
been  generally  appreciated.  The  origin  of  these  was 
in  all  cases  partly  religious,  being  consecrated  to  some 
hero  or  higher  deity — Zeus,  Apollo,  Poseidon.  Men 
from  various  and  possibly  hostile  tribes  might  come 
together  to  witness  or  partake  in  the  contests,  and  to 
join  in  the  local  worship  which  established  a  temporary 
holy  truce  or  "  peace  of  god,"  nor  do  we  ever  hear  of 
these  great  gatherings  being  disturbed  by  discord  or 
bloodshed.  The  institution  of  the  Olympic  games 
was  of  remote  antiquity,  and  doubtless  they  contri- 
buted something  to  the  gradual  emergence  of  the 
idea  of  a  Panhellenic  Zeus.  This  was  consecrated 
by  the  world-masterpiece  of  Pheidias,  the  great  statue 
of  the  god  in  gold  and  ivory  set  up  in  the  Olympian 
temple  in  the  fifth  century,  which  a  later  writer^ 
describes  as  the  image  of  a  deity  "  mild  and  peaceful, 
the  god  of  a  Hellas  living  in  concord  with  itself." 

Of  equal  importance  for  the  possibility  of  national 
union  were  the  early  Amphiktyones,  or  organisations 
of  different  tribes  and  peoples  for  the  protection  and 
management  of  some  common  temple ;  and  before 
the  idea  of  such  a  policy  could  have  arisen,  religion 
must  have  overpassed  the  narrow  tribal  stage.  The 
salient  and  most  interesting  example  of  such  an 
Amphiktyony,  a  word  which  properly  signifies  "  the 

1  Dio  Chrysost.,  Or.,  l'-2,  p.  412  R, 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN   RELIGION     97 

union  of  the  peoples  who  dwell  around  a  temple," 
was  the  Delphic.  What  were  the  political  condi- 
tions that  facilitated  this  union  is  a  question  that  does 
not  concern  us.  What  suggested  to  these  Amphik- 
tyones,  who  were  originally  organised  to  protect  a 
temple  of  Demeter  near  Thermopylae,  to  concern 
themselves  with  Delphi,  was  the  growth  of  the 
oracle  to  a  position  of  international  importance,  and 
to  this  position  it  must  have  begun  to  approach  in 
the  Homeric  or  pre- Homeric  period.  For  the  list  of 
the  various  members  of  the  league  reflects  the  ethnic 
conditions  of  an  age  prior  to  the  Ionic  migrations 
and  the  Dorian  conquest  of  the  Peloponnese,  an  age 
also  when  the  e^i^og  or  tribe  rather  than  the  Polls 
was  the  dominating  factor  of  society.^  The  oath 
taken  by  the  members,  preserved  '  by  ^schines, 
bound  them  "  not  to  destroy  any  city  of  the  league, 
not  to  cut  any  one  of  them  off  from  spring-water, 
either  in  war  or  peace,  and  to  war  against  any  who 
violated  these  rules."  The  oath  may  have  been 
broken,  and  Demosthenes  might  speak  slightingly  of 
"  the  Delphic  shadow  " ;  but  the  text,  which  has  the 
ring  of  genuine  antiquity,  is  a  priceless  document  of 
Greek  social-religious  history,  for  it  proclaimed,  how- 
ever falteringly,  the  ideal  of  an  intertribal  morality 
and  concord.  On  a  large  scale  this  was  never  realised 
in  the  tragic  history  of  Greece ;  nevertheless  the  un- 
realised aspirations  of  any  religion  retain  their  value. 

The  whole  history  of  the  Delphic  oracle  much  con- 
cerns our  present  interest.     I  have  dealt  with  it  in  some 

1    Fide  my  Cults,  vol.  iv.  pp.  182-185. 

7 


98         HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

fullness  elsewhere/  and  can  here  only  glance  at  its 
main  effects.     Certain  legends  pointedly  suggest  that 
it  had  assisted  the  Doric  migration  into  the  Pelopon- 
nese ;  and  at  least  from  the  eighth  century  onwards 
it  is  the  most   potent   Panhellenic   force   in    Greek 
religious   institutions.     It    directed   the   counsels   of 
States,  and  had  at  times  the  opportunity  of  inspiring 
their  legislation ;  it  fostered  and  aided  by  invaluable 
advice  the  expanding  colonisation  of  Greece,  and  was 
able  thereby  to  bind  the  new  colonies  by  indissoluble 
ties  to  Delphi.     It  might  claim  even  to  dispose  of 
territory.     In  religious  matters  its  influence  was  of 
the  greatest,  and  it  helped  to  diffuse  a  general  system 
of  purification  from  bloodshed  ;  and  when  after  the 
fifth  century  its  political  authority  waned,  it  served 
in  some  sort  as  a  confessional  whereto  troubled  and 
conscience-stricken  minds  might  resort.     The  records 
almost,  in  fact,  suggest  an  ambition  on  the  part  of 
Delphi  to  play  the  same  part  in  relation  to  the  Greek 
cities  as  the  mediaeval  papacy  played  in  relation  to 
the    States    of    Christendom.      But    an    ecclesiastic 
domination     was     rendered    impossible    in    Greece, 
partly   by   the    absence    of    genius   at   Delphi,   but 
mainly  by   the    stubborn   independence   and    centri- 
fugal instincts  of  the  Greek  Polls.     Finally,  we  may 
note  one  historic  fact  in  the  history  of  Delphi,  that 
may  have  been  of  importance  for  the  expansion  of  the 
horizon  of  Greek  religion.     In  the  seventh  and  sixth 
centuries  a  great  non- Hellenic  power,  the  monarchy 
of  Lydia,  is  found  to  be  consulting  and  courting  the 

1  Vide  Cults,  vol.  iv.  pp.  179-218. 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN   RELIGION     99 

favour  of  the  Delphic  Apollo.  An  impulse  was  thus 
given  to  the  birth  of  an  idea  that  the  sphere  of  god- 
head was  not  limited  to  the  tribe,  not  even  to  the 
nation  in  our  sense  of  the  word,  but  might  embrace 
all  mankind.  But  it  was  not  till  a  later  period  that 
Greek  thought  showed  itself  wholly  free  to  make  this 
momentous  advance. 

It  is  true  to  say,  then,  that  at  no  epoch  of  Greek 
society  that  we  can  yet  discover  was  Greek  religion 
wholly  confined  within  the  bonds  of  clan,  tribe,  or 
city.  Nor  does  it  appear  at  any  time  to  have  been 
true  of  Greek  morality  that  its  outlook  was  limited 
to  the  circle  of  kindred  and  did  not  include  the  alien 
and  stranger.  One  of  the  clearest  proofs  of  this  is 
the  great  antiquity  of  the  ritual  of  oath-taking  and 
of  the  moral  feeling  about  perjury  as  a  primary  sin 
against  the  divinity  in  whose  name  a  person  was 
forsworn.  The  ancient  religious  ceremony  of  the 
oath  has  a  peculiar  interest  on  two  grounds :  first,  it 
was  a  form  of  communion  between  the  oath-taker 
and  the  divine  power  invoked  ;  for,  as  more  than  one 
passage  in  the  Homeric  poems  and  the  record  of  the 
old  Attic  ritual  in  the  Court  of  the  Areopagus  attest, 
the  person  at  the  moment  of  swearing  put  himself 
into  touch  or  rapport  with  some  object  that  estab- 
lished a  mystical  current  between  himself  and  the 
divinity,  and  perhaps  in  the  most  primitive  stage  of 
thought  the  curse  set  in  motion  by  perjury,  as  in  the 
ordeal,  was  spontaneously  destructive  or  blasting ; 
later  this  idea  would  pass  into  the  higher  theistic 
thought    that    the    wrath   of  a   righteous   god    was 


100       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

awakened  by  it.  Secondly,  in  this  religious  act,  and 
perhaps  in  this  alone,  the  status  of  the  contracting 
parties  was  not  considered  at  all ;  an  oath  sworn 
to  an  alien  or  even  a  slave  was  as  binding  as  one 
sworn  to  a  kinsman  or  a  tribesman,  according  to  the 
religious  logic  of  the  ceremony.  And  the  public 
oath  taken  between  ahen  tribes,  or  houses,  or  com- 
munities was  no  doubt  of  as  great  antiquity  as  the 
private  between  individuals.  The  morality  that 
was  associated  with  it  was  never  bound  by  the 
limitations  of  kinship  and  community  of  status : 
thus  it  quickened  the  sense  that  the  deity  punished 
wrongs  committed  against  aliens,  at  least  under 
certain  conditions. 

We  here  see  religion  originating  a  great  principle  of 
international  law,  the  sanctity  of  treaties  and  of  pledges 
given  to  the  alien.  We  may  discern  it  also  operative 
in  the  same  sphere,  at  the  dawn  of  Greek  society,  by 
investing  the  person  of  the  herald  or  ambassador  with 
an  inviolable  sanctity.  The  herald  bore  the  Ky^pvKeiov, 
the  badge  of  Hermes,  and  thus  he  could  pass  safely 
through  hostile  lands  ;  for  injury  done  to  him  would 
be,  as  Plato  asseverates,^  sacrilege  against  Zeus  and 
Hermes  ;  and  we  discover  the  same  principle  at  work 
in  the  religious  law  of  early  Rome.  Thus  it  was  that 
religion  was  able  to  win  recognition  for  one  of  the 
most  enduring  ideas  of  international  ethics.  How 
strong  was  the  hold  of  this  law  on  the  conscience  of 
Greece  in  the  fifth  century  is  well  attested  by  the 
story  in  Herodotus^  of  the  divine  punishment  that 
1  Laws,  p.  941  A.  2  7,  134. 


NATIONAL  AND   HUMANITARIAN   RELIGION     101 

befell  the  Spartans  for  the  slaughter  of  the  Persian 
heralds. 

There  were  other  ways  in  which  religion  could  assist 
the  growth  of  a  morality  that  transcended  the  ancient 
limitations  of  the  kinship-groups.  The  curse-power 
embodied  in  the  personal  'Apa  or  Erinys  was  an  im- 
memorial weapon  of  the  wronged,  and  might  be 
imagined  as  no  respecter  of  persons.  Practically, 
this  was  not  wholly  true :  those  of  greater  authority, 
the  father  and  mother  or  elder  brother  of  the  house- 
hold, the  ruler  of  the  tribe  or  State,  were  believed  to 
possess  the  greater  power  of  the  curse  ;  and  we  have 
noted  already  the  significance  of  the  words,  "  Thou 
knowest  that  the  Erinyes  ever  follow  the  lead  of  the 
elder  born."  Yet  Homer  himself  conceives  the 
possibility  that  the  Erinyes  might  hearken  to  the 
curse  of  the  lowly,  and  even  a  beggar  might,  if 
wronged,  arouse  them.^  Tlie  later  religious  literature 
occasionally  associates  the  Erinyes  with  a  vague 
moral  supervision  of  mankind.  In  the  vision  of 
Sophocles,  as  we  have  seen,  they  are  powers  that  have 
an  eye  over  all  the  sufferings  of  men.  But  this  pro- 
vident care  belonged  in  the  later  religion  not  to  these 
ancient  curse-spirits  but  to  the  high  god,  and  the  curse 
becomes  moralised  as  the  prayer.  Already  in  Homer 
the  idea  is  clearly  expressed  that  God  listens  to  the 
prayers  of  all  who  are  aggrieved,  regardless  of  status  or 
race  :  in  the  famous  speech  of  Phoinix,  the  prayers  are 
"  the  daughters  of  Zeus.  They  bring  great  blessings 
to  him  who  reverences  them  ;  but  if  a  man  ruthlessly 

1  Od.,  17.  475. 


102       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF  GREEK   RELIGION 

repel  them,  they  mount  to  the  throne  of  God  and 
appeal  against  that  man,  that  bane  may  come  to  him."^ 
In  early  society,  public  morality  mainly  follows 
the  lead  of  religion  ;  and  such  religious  utterances  as 
these  could  gradually  quicken  a  public  conscience 
that  would  reprobate  wrongs  done  to  aliens  and  to 
those  of  no  political  rights,  whom  no  State-law  or 
tribunal  could  protect.  We  cannot  give  the  date  of 
this  momentous  first  step  towards  a  world-morality. 
We  have  seen  the  germs  of  it  in  Homer ;  but  we 
would  like  to  know  more  exactly  when,  for  instance, 
the  idea  began  to  permeate  the  average  conscience  of 
the  Greek  community  that  the  slaying  of  an  unpro- 
tected and  harmless  alien  was  a  sin  against  God  and 
a  crime  against  the  society  within  whose  borders  he 
was  slain.  Doubtless  it  was  felt  as  a  sin  and  excited 
"nemesis,"  or  moral  indignation,  before  any  public 
law  made  it  penal  ;  for  of  this  latter  stage  in  the 
history  of  ethics  our  first  record  is  as  late  as  the 
fourth  century.  I  have  suggested  above,  that  the 
stronger  sense  in  the  post-Homeric  society  of  the 
terrors  of  the  ghost-world  might  have  assisted  the 
establishment  of  a  law  against  the  slaying  of  aliens. 
But  long  before  this  the  cult  of  Zeus  "  Xenios,"  the 
god  who  protects  the  stranger  and  the  wanderer,  an 
ancient  cult  attested  by  the  Homeric  poems,  had 
done  all  that  religion  could  do  to  expand  the  moral 
feelings  of  the   tribe  beyond  the  tribal  limits.'^     In 

1  //.,  9.  508. 

2  Oc?.,     14.    57:    Trpos  yap   Ato5   ctcrii/  aTravres   iecvoL    re    irroixot    tc  ; 
Od.,  14.  283  :   Ato?  8'  wtti'^cto  /xrjviv  Hetvt'ov. 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN    RELIGION     103 

the  better  minds,  doubtless,  the  moral  conscience 
responded ;  in  fact,  an  awakening  moral  sympathy 
with  the  stranger  may  have  assisted  in  engendering 
the  cult.  The  average  moral  and  religious  feeling  of 
Homer's  society  may  be  illustrated  by  the  ironical 
words  of  the  good  swineherd  Eumaios :  "  Truly  with 
a  cheerful  heart  should  I  proffer  my  prayers  to  Zeus, 
were  I  to  slay  the  stranger  whom  I  had  received  in 
my  hut."^  In  fact,  Homer  anticipates  the  view  of 
the  later  humane  society  and  ethic  of  Greece,  the 
view  expressed,  for  instance,  by  Plato  in  a  striking 
passage  of  the  L,aws^  where  he  speaks  of  the  friend- 
less stranger  as  of  all  objects  the  most  pity-moving 
in  the  eyes  of  gods  and  men,  and  of  wrongs  done  to 
him  as  sacrilege  awakening  the  vengeance  of  God. 

Hospitality  leads  to  friendship,  and  these  are 
humanistic  forces  impatient  of  the  barriers  of  status 
and  kinship.  No  race  has  ever  manifested  a  greater 
genius  for  friendship  than  the  Hellen  ;  his  sentiment 
concerning  it  was  partly  moral,  partly  religious,  and 
often  wholly  romantic  ;  and  it  was  quite  natural  for 
Aristotle  to  devote  two  books  of  his  ethical  treatise 
to  the  subject  of  friendship.  The  Greek  tended 
always  to  find  a  place  in  his  religion  for  whatever  he 
felt  passionately  about ;  and  that  is  why  Greek  re- 
ligion reflects  so  vividly  the  emotions  and  sentiments 
of  the  individual.  Therefore  he  devised  a  religious 
consecration   for   friendship,  by  such   invocations   of 

1  Od.,  14.  405. 

2  P.  729  E ;  c/.  a  passage  of  similar  tenor  quoted  by  Stobaeiis^ 
bk.  44,  ch.  40,  from  the  prooemia  of  Charondas. 


104       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

Zeus  as  OiXto?  'Eratpeto?,  or  of  Apollo  as  ^LXyj(TLo<;. 
Whether  at  any  time  the  Hellenes  possessed,  as  some 
have  supposed,  the  magical  quasi-sacramental  rite  of 
swearing  friendship  by  the  mutual  quaffing  of  each 
other's  blood  in  wine,  a  rite  not  yet  wholly  extinct 
among  the  Teutonic  peoples,  is  a  question  about 
which  we  have  no  clear  evidence ;  but  it  appears 
that  the  common  libations  offered  at  friendly  ban- 
quets might  be  considered  to  constitute  a  religious 
bond  of  fellowship.  Thus  we  find  a  special  associa- 
tion of  fellow-banqueters,  ipavLarai,  who  worship 
Zeus  ^t\to9  at  Athens,^  and  such  societies,  or  epavoi 
as  they  were  called,  did  not  limit  their  member- 
ship to  kinsmen  or  citizens,  but  often  included  aliens. 
And  this  cult  of  Zeus  Philios,  a  peculiar  product  of 
a  genial  people  to  which  we  cannot  find  a  parallel 
among  the  adjacent  races,  was  given  the  widest 
humanistic  sense  by  the  later  interpreters  :  most  note- 
worthy are  the  words  of  Dio  Chrysostom :  "  God  is 
called  0t\to9  and  'Eraipeco?  (the  god  of  friendship 
and  fellowship)  because  he  brings  all  mankind  into 
union,  and  desires  that  they  should  be  friends  one 
with  another."^ 

In  concluding  this  inquiry  into  those  factors  of 
Greek  religion  that  fostered  the  more  expansive 
sentiment  of  humanism,  whereby  the  religious  spirit 
is  released  from  the  fetters  of  clan  and  tribe,  we  may 
consider  the  influence  of  the  divine  name  in  the 
polytheism.      The   magic    or   mystic   power   of  the 

^   Corp.  Ins.  Grcec,  2.  1330. 
-   Or.,  \^2,  Dind.,  ]).  237. 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN  RELIGION     105 

divine  name  is  a  phenomenon  of  great  moment  in 
the  history  of  rehgions,  and  much  has  already  been 
written  on  this  subject  and  on  the  text  "  iiomina  sunt 
numina.''  ^ 

The  old  Hellenes  possessed  this  belief  in  the  magic 
value  of  the  divine  name  for  the  purposes  of  conjura- 
tion and  invocation,  though  there  is  reason  for  think- 
ing that  in  their  more  virile  period  they  were  less  in 
bondage  to  it  than  were  the  surrounding  peoples.  At 
any  rate  the  floating  and  vague  conceptions  of  divinity 
were  fixed  and  crystallised  for  the  Hellene  by  the  force 
of  the  divine  names  into  clear  and  definite  personalities. 
And  the  fact  with  which  we  must  reckon  in  the 
earliest  period  of  their  history,  that  the  great  names 
of  Zeus,  Apollo,  Poseidon,  Hera,  Athena,  Artemis 
were  a  common  heritage  of  the  most  widely  scattered 
communities  and  tribes,  was  indeed  the  strongest 
obstacle  to  the  growth  of  monotheism  ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  a  strongly  efficient  principle  of  unity 
in  the  religion.  A  divinity  called  by  the  same  name 
in  Attica  and  Arcadia  might  be  composite  of  many 
different  local  elements,  and  absorb  different  traditions 
from  the  varying  religious  emotions  and  experience 
of  the  aboriginal  populations.  Yet  in  the  great 
centres  of  cult,  among  the  leading  peoples  and  in 
respect  of  the  leading  divinities,  the  identity  of  the 
divine  names  constrained  the  Hellenic  mind  to  a 
certain  synthesis  of  religious  imagination ;  whereof 
the  final  issue  was  that  there  was  one  Apollo,   not 

1   Vide   Giesebrecht,   Die   AU-testamentliche  Schdtzung   des  Gottes- 
namens;  and  my  Evolution  of  Religion ,  pp.  183-19'^. 


106      HIGHER  ASPECTS   OF  GREEK  RELIGION 

many  Apollos,  one  Dionysos,  not  many  Dionysoi.^ 
Nor  is  there  anything  that  hints  at  a  behef  even  in 
the  least-informed  minds  of  Hellas  that  the  Apollo 
of  Athens  or  Sparta  or  Branchidai  was  a  different 
personality  from  the  Apollo  of  Delphi :  nor,  so  long 
as  the  identical  divine  name  was  in  vogue,  any  trace 
of  that  savage  weakness  of  intellect  and  imagination 
that  makes  for  particularism  and  the  plurality  of 
personality,  such  as  is  attested  of  certain  villages  in 
Italy,  whose  inhabitants  possess  different  and  rival 
images  of  the  Madonna,  and  are  capable  of  regarding 
the  one  Virgin  as  hostile  to  the  other,  losing  entirely 
the  idea  of  personal  unity. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  later  Greek  at  least  was 
not  so  spell-bound  by  the  magic  of  the  name  but 
that  he  was  capable  of  the  humane  and  tolerant  idea 
that  seemed  so  hard  for  the  Semitic  mind  of  Israel 
to  grasp — namely,  that  mankind  might  worship  the 
same  godhead  under  different  names  :  hence,  as  he 
came  into  the  larger  society  of  a  world-empire  and 
into  closer  contact  with  Oriental  peoples,  he  was 
able  with  pliancy  and  sincerity  to  identify  his  Zeus 
with  their  Baal  or  their  Amun,  his  Demeter  with 
their  I  sis,  his  Dionysos  with  their  Jahwe.  The 
crudest  fanaticism  and  the  most  savage  religious 
wars  have  been  stimulated  partly  by  this  fallacious 
sentiment  concerning  the  magic  of  names.  The 
Greek  escaped  all  this,  nor  did  any  religious  war  in 
the  true  sense  of  the  word  stain  the  pages  of  Greek 

1  The  idol  of  Athena  in  Troy  is  regarded  as  embodying  the  same 
personality  as  the  Hellenic  Athena  who  is  the  chief  foe  of  Troy. 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN   RELIGION     JOT 

history ;  and  no  unhappy  logic  compelled  him  to 
degrade  the  deities  of  other  peoples  into  the  rank 
of  devils.  If  the  modern  man  has  arrived  at  the 
conception  that  difference  of  divine  title  is  of  little 
import,  a  conception  of  priceless  value  for  the  cause 
of  human  unity,  he  owes  it  mainly,  as  Rome  owed 
it,  to  the  mind  of  Hellas. 

We  may  now  consider  certain  special  ideas  in  the 
Greek  conception  of  divinity  that  illustrate  the  higher 
and  broader  view  of  a  humanitarian  religion. 

A   fundamental  dogma  of  the  old-world  religious^ 
morality  was  that  God  rewards  the  good  and  punishes 
the  evil ;  and  scarcely  any  of  the  higher  religions  have 
been  able  to  dispense  with  the  doctrine  that  the  Deity 
is  a  God  of  vengeance,  who  proclaims  His  nature  in 
the  phrase  "  Vengeance  is  Mine."     Whatever  we  may 
think  of  it,  it  played  a  most  efficient  part  in  the  con- 
struction  and   preservation  of  the   morality   of   the 
ancient  societies,  and  it  still  appears  as  a  living  belief 
among   ourselves.     The  Greek  in  this  respect  stood 
on  the  same  level  with  the  Roman,  the  Israelite,  and    ' 
the  Mesopotamian  man.     The  belief  vividly  presented 
in  his  earliest  literature  that  Zeus  punishes  the  sinner 
and  avenges  wrong  was  embodied  also  in  various  cult- 
titles,  by  which  the  god  was  invoked,  such  as  TLfjia)p6<;, 
YlaXaixvoLo^,    'AXacrTo/309,    various    names    for    "  the 
avenger,"  with  a  special  reference  to  vengeance  for 
bloodshed,  that  law  which  formed  the  basis  of  Greek 
society  and  of  much  of  Greek  religion.    Human  society 
is  thus  reflected  into  the  heavens,  and  morality  gained 
something  from  the  reflection  ;  for  the  belief  in  God 


108       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF  GREEK   RELIGION 

as  the  avenger  has  sometimes  been  used  to  soften 
human  vindictiveness.^  With  it  was  closely  asso- 
ciated in  the  Greek  mind  the  belief  in  the  righteousness 
and  justice  of  God,  and  no  religion  has  ever  exalted 
justice  to  a  higher  place  in  its  system  than  was  given 
it  in  the  Hellenic.  Dike  was  personified  as  the 
daughter  of  Zeus,  and  such  personification  was  no 
mere  fiction  of  the  poets,  but  won  its  way  at  an 
early  time  into  popular  art,  and  later  into  actual  cult, 
showing  thus  how  powerful  was  the  moral  emotion 
that  inspired  the  personification.  And  we  find  some 
of  the  most  glowing  imagination  of  Greek  poetry 
radiating  upon  this  abstraction  which  for  us  appears 
somewhat  dull  and  on  the  whole  uninspiring.  A 
modern  could  scarcely  speak  as  Euripides,  who  praises 
'*  the  golden-gleaming  countenance  of  Justice,  nor  is 
evening-star  nor  morning-star  so  wonderful  as  this."' 
Yet  in  the  higher  popular  religion  and  in  the  current 
theologic  theories  the  qualities  of  mercy  and  com- 
passionateness  are  at  least  as  prominent  in  their 
conception  of  the  highest  divinity.  The  earliest 
spokesman  of  the  young  Hellenic  race  felt  deeply 
the  pity  of  things  and  adjudged  pitifulness  to  be  the 
highest  human  and  divdne  attribute.  Hence  Apollo 
is  made  to  reproach  the  deities  for  tolerating  the 
mercilessness  of  Achilles.^     The  speech  of  Phoenix, 

^  Vide  Sophocles'  Electra,  1.  173-177:  "My  child,  Zeus  is  still 
great  in  heaven  .  .  .  leave  to  him  thy  exceeding  bitter  wrath, 
and  be  not  too  full  of  rage  against  those  thou  hatest  nor  yet  forget 
them." 

2   P^ide  Dindorf,  Fragm.,  490;  Arist.,  Nicom.  Eth.,  5.  2.  p.  1 1!29  h,  28. 

2  //.,  24>.  S9,  45. 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN   RELIGION     109 

in  which  the  famous  passage  about  the  power  of 
prayer  is  found,  is  full  of  striking  illustration  of  the 
same  idea  :  "  But,  O  Achilles  !  bend  thy  mighty  spirit ; 
it  behoveth  thee  not  to  bear  a  ruthless  heart ;  even 
the  gods,  whose  worth  and  honour  and  might  are  even 
greater  than  thine,  can  be  turned  to  pity."  And  there 
is  this  further  interest  in  these  beautiful  verses,  that 
the  divine  nature  is  held  up  as  a  moral  standard  for 
man.  Yet  no  words  in  Homer  on  this  theme  strike 
so  deep  as  the  simple  phrase  in  the  speech  of  Zeus, 
Ixikovo-L  fjLOi  6X\vfji€i/oL  TTEp,^  words  untranslatable  but 
revealing  the  pity  of  the  high  god  for  our  ephemeral 
and  sorrow-laden  lives. 

These  are  high  thoughts  and  the  expressions  of  a 
delicate  religious  sentiment.  And  the  later  literature, 
especially  the  Attic  drama,  full  as  it  is  of  denuncia- 
tions of  God's  wrath  against  sinners  and  of  assurances 
of  the  slow  but  ever-sure  operation  of  justice,  yet 
dwells  on  and  expands  the  conception  of  mercy.  The 
typical  and  most  illustrative  passage  is  in  the  CEdipus 
Coloneus,^  part  of  Polyneikes'  appeal  for  his  father's 
forgiveness :  "  Pity  sits  by  the  throne  of  Zeus,  his 
peer  in  power  over  all  the  deeds  of  men."  And 
we  may  find  in  the  later  literature,  from  the  end 
of  the  fifth  century  onwards,  hints  and  sometimes 
clear  expressions  of  an  ethical  theory  that  approaches 
the  Christian  doctrine  concerning  forgiveness  of 
wrongs. 

The  question  is  one  of  the  most  interesting,  how 
far   this  [more  advanced  spiritual  idea  was  reflected 

1   //.,  m  21.  2  1.  1275. 


no       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

in  the  actual  worship.     The  earhest  expression  of  it 
in   this   sphere   is  the  appellative  tfcerT^o-to?,  the  god 
who   hearkens  to  supplication,  attached  to  Zeus  by 
Horner,^  who  draws  such  epithets  from  a  traditional 
stock  of  liturgical  invocations  proper  to  the  special 
needs   of  the   individual  worshippers.     It  is  curious 
indeed  to  find  that,  in  the  one  Homeric  passage  where 
it  occurs,  this  epithet  which  connotes  mercy  is  also 
associated   with   a    special    function    of    the    divine 
retribution — namely,    with   the    wrath    of    the   high 
god   against   those   who    harm    the    suppliant,    and 
it   is   with   this  in  view   that  Odysseus  invokes  the 
god   by   this   call.       But    mainly   it  is   the  merciful 
nature  of  the  god  to  which  appeal  is  made  by  such 
appellatives    as    t/cerT/o-to?   and    iKecrio^.      The   sinner 
himself,    not   merely   the   victim   of    wrong,  throws 
himself  upon  the  mercy  of  the  deity ;  and  according 
to  a  myth  of  the  highest  religious  and  ethical  interest 
preserved  by  iEschylus  and  Pherekydes,  Ixion,  who 
treacherously  murdered  his  father-in-law,  and  who  is 
the  Cain  of  Greek  legend,  the  first  murderer,  is  also 
the  first  suppliant.     He  wanders  an  outcast  and  finds 
"his   punishment   too   great   for   him   to   bear,"   till 
Zeus   T/ceVto?  takes   pity   on  him,  purifies  him,  and 
receives  him  into  his  divine  fellowship.     The  story  is 
doubtless   post-Homeric,    at   least   in   respect   of  its 
peculiar   ethical   colouring ;    as   is   also  the  myth  of 
the   purification   of  Orestes    by   Apollo.       But    the 
actual   cult   of  Zeus,  the   suppliant's   god,  must  be 
older  than  Homer ;  and  an  interesting  form  of  it  is 

1   Od.,  13.  217. 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN   RELIGION     111 

attested  by  a  very  archaic  inscription  found  in  Laconia, 
mentioning  the  strange  title  of  Zeus  'I/cctt^?  as  if 
Zeus  himself  were  the  suppliant :  this  is  a  salient 
example  of  that  peculiar  style  of  invocation  in  Greek 
liturgy  noticed  above,  whereby  the  appeal  to  the 
deity  was  given  a  quasi-magical  power  by  attaching 
to  him  an  appellative  which  applied  properly  to  the 
worshipper  and  expressed  his  needs. 

The  title  just  considered  had  always  a  close  associa- 
tion with  the  sin  of  bloodshed,  which  weighed  heavily 
on  the  more  sensitive  consciences  of  the  later  Greeks  ; 
but  from  the  beginning  it  seems  to  have  possessed, 
and  it  always  retained,  the  broader  significance,  and 
it  tended  more  than  any  other  cult-fact  to  deepen 
the  conception  of  divine  mercy.  Of  the  same 
spiritual  value  is  the  appellative  AlSoZo?,  "  the 
compassionate,"  which  ^Eschylus  attaches  to  his 
supreme  god  in  a  noteworthy  passage  in  the  Sup- 
plices ;  ^  speaking  of  the  suppliant  fillets  laid  on  the 
altar  as  the  "  emblems  of  Zeus,  the  God  of  Pity."^ 
An  important  indication  of  the  strong  religious  feeling 
that  'centred  in  this  emotion  is  the  personification 
and  actual  worship  of  AtSw?  and  "EXeog  (Pity  and 
Compassion)  as  "  numina  "  or  daimonic  powers  making 
for  compassion.  The  record  chiefly  concerns  Athens, 
the  "  natio  misericors,"  but  we  have  some  traces  of 
the  cult  of  "  pity  "  elsewhere. 

It  may  be  remarked,  by  the  way,  that  the  account 

1  1.  192. 

2  A  cult-appellative,  found  later  in  Bithynia,  Zeus  Atrato?,  the 
God  of  Prayer,  expresses  the  same  spiritual  concept. 


112       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

of  these  personifications  of  moral  ideas,  mental  moods, 
and  emotions  is  of  importance  for  the  general  history 
of  Hellenic  psychology  and  ethics  :  for  only  those  of 
the  greatest  intensity  would  be  likely  to  impress  the 
mind  as  a  divine  agency. 

The  doctrine  of  divine  mercy  was  sufficiently  pro- 
claimed in  the  popular  literature,  especially  in  the 
drama,  to  have  become  a  genuine  tradition  of  the 
popular  Hellenic  faith.  Euripides,  the  secret  scorner 
of  the  polytheism  and  often  the  preacher  of  a  pro- 
founder  religious  theory,  used  a  phrase  that  was 
remembered,  ov  yap  ao-vverov  to  Oeiov  dXX'  e)(€L  avviivai, 
"the  divine  power  is  not  blunt-witted,  but  knows 
how  to  make  allowances."^  Interesting  from  the 
same  point  of  view  is  the  popular  story  told  by 
Plutarch  of  the  priest  who,  under  special  temptations, 
broke  his  temporary  obligation  of  chastity,  and  hur- 
ried conscience-stricken  to  Delphi  to  learn  by  what 
penance  or  religious  rites  he  could  escape  the  divine 
wrath  ;  the  oracle  answered  in  a  memorable  verse : 
*'  anavTa  TavayKOia  (jvy}(0)peL  0e6<;,''^  "  God  pardons  all 
that  is  done  under  constraint,"  implying  that  there 
are  certain  temptations  which  human  nature  is  too 
weak  to  resist. 

It  is  natural  to  suppose  that  this  conception  of  the 
deity  as  by  nature  mild  and  forgiving  reacted  on  the 
traditional  theory  of  divine  vengeance,  and  on  the 
religious  view  of  the  mystery  of  evil.  The  moral 
dogma,  older  in  origin  than  the  beginnings  of  their 
recorded  history,  that  the  gods  punish   the   sinner, 

1  Ipk.  AuL,  394.  2  piut.,  De  Pyth.  Orac,  p.  404  B. 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN   RELIGION     IIB 

was  often  observed  to  be  contradicted  by  experience  ; 
and  Hellenic  thought  resorted  to  the  same  expedients 
to  reconcile  faith  with  fact  as  the  Hebrew :  "  God's 
justice  moves  on  silent  ways."^  "The  mills  of  God 
grind  slowly,  but  they  grind  exceeding  small " ;  ^ 
"  God  is  not  like  a  hasty-tempered  man,  venting  His 
anger  at  once  on  the  occasion  of  every  wrong " ; 
"  Justice  visits  some  in  the  light  of  day,  some  in  the 
twilight  of  life's  close,"  ^ — these  are  some  of  the 
typical  expressions  of  the  thinkers  of  Greece,  striving 
to  find  a  subtle  justification  for  the  belief  in  divine 
providence.  Very  rarely  was  it  justified  by  any 
strong  pronouncement  of  a  doctrine  of  posthumous 
punishments  or  of  moral  retribution  after  death,  a 
doctrine  which  scarcely  touched  the  higher  ethical 
theory  of  Greece,  though  it  was  alive  and  prominent 
in  the  mystic  circles  of  Orphism.  Rut  the  theory 
which  had  most  strongly  affected  the  moral  belief  of 
the  people,  and  was  long-enduring,  was  that  which 
maintained  that  the  sins  of  the  fathers  were  visited 
upon  the  children  of  the  later  generations.  And 
this,  as  we  have  seen,  was  derived  from  the  old 
clan-system  of  morality ;  and  though  it  is  embedded 
in  so  much  of  Greek  literature,  and  especially  in  the 
Attic  drama,  it  could  never  satisfy  the  higher  ethical 
speculation,  and  already  in  the  sixth  century  Theognis 
begins  to  protest  against  it.^ 

1  Eur.,  Troad.,  887. 

~  6if/€   Oeojy  aXiovcTL  [xvXol,   aXiovat   Se  AeTrra*   to  irapa    rois    TroAAots 
....   X^yojxcx'ov.   Sext.  Empir.,  tt/oo?  ypafXfxaTLKois,  287. 

3  JEsch.,  Choepk.,  6l-62. 

4  1.  731-742. 

8 


114       HIGHER    ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

But  the  very  postulate  of  divine  vengeance  or 
retribution  was  sometimes  called  into  question  by 
the  bolder  or  more  profound  thinkers,  who  challenged 
the  morality  of  the  idea.  Among  the  poets  certain 
phrases  of  Euripides  on  this  topic  are  notable :  "  It  is 
not  right  for  a  god  to  be  like  a  revengeful  man,"  is 
the  protest  of  Agaue  to  the  vindictive  Dionysos  ;  ^  in 
the  Andromache  the  comment  of  the  messenger  on 
the  theory  that  the  death  of  Neoptolemos  at  Delphi 
was  brought  about  by  Apollo  in  revenge  for  Achilles' 
insult  to  the  god,  is  prompt  and  severe  :  "  Then,  Hke 
a  base-minded  man,  the  god  remembered  ancient 
grudges."^  Such  utterances  really  contain  the  germ 
of  a  new  theology,  more  akin  in  character  to  the 
Buddhistic  than  to  Hebraic  ;  and  we  may  imagine 
them  to  have  been  inspired  by  the  striking  passage 
near  the  beginning  of  the  Odyssey,  where  Zeus  pro- 
claims it  as  a  great  truth  that  the  gods  never  send 
evil  to  men,  as  they  falsely  suppose,  but  that  all  evil 
comes  to  men  of  their  own  evil  choice,  and  from  their 
own  depravity.  This  pregnant  idea  is  systematised 
into  a  dogma  of  later  ethical  philosophy  :  Demokritos, 
for  example,  maintains  the  perfect  excellence  of  the 
deity,  and  refuses  to  allow  a  divine  origin  to  any  evil.^ 

The  Pythagorean  school  is  accredited^  with  the 
striking  dogma  :  /SkdnTet  6eo^  ov  ^(okoideis  dXX'  ayvorjOei<^, 
opyrj  yap  6eov  aWoTpcov — "  we  are  injured,  not  by  the 
anger  of  God,  but  by  our  ignorance  of  Him,  for  anger 
is  wholly  alien  to  the  nature  of  God." 

1  Bacch,,  1348.  2  Androm.,  11 64. 

3  Stobae.,  Floril.,  5.  24.  ^  Miillach,  i.  p.  497. 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN   RELIGION     115 

The  same  idea  inspires  Plato's  theory  of  human 
and  divine  punishment  as  expounded  in  the  early 
part  of  his  Republic :  ^  he  constructs  it  wholly  on  a 
utilitarian  educational  basis ;  he  reprobates  the 
imputation  of  vengeance  to  God,  and  would  regard 
Kant's  vindictive  theory  of  punishment  as  barbarous 
and  immoral.  In  fact,  it  was  the  achievement  of 
Greek  theologic  speculation  to  rise  above  the  Hebraic 
concept  of  a  god  of  vengeance.^ 

The  philosophic  optimism  could  never  be  wholly 
adopted  by  the  popular  theology,  which  failed  to 
escape  from  the  vindictive  view  of  divine  providence ; 
but  it  corresponded  on  the  whole  with  the  popular 
feehng  that  the  divinity  was  in  the  main  merciful  and 
beneficent.  Greek  religion  did  not  recognise,  as  did  « 
the  Mesopotamian,  an  evil  God  ;  the  numerous  titles  \ 
attached  to  its  deities  are,  with  one  or  two  exceptions, 
euphemistic  and,  we  may  say,  philanthropic.  Even 
the  unseen  beings  of  lower  grade  called  Saiixove^  were 
not  usually  imagined  by  the  people  as  maleficent,  for 
they  included  the  kindly  spirits  of  the  departed,  and 
we  note  in  the  later  period  the  cult  of  Agathos  Daimon, 
the  good  spirit  of  blessing  and  fertility.  Yet  even 
in  the  Homeric  poems,  which  are  not  wholly  innocent 
of  the  pessimistic  thought  that  the  high  powers 
themselves  might  tempt  a  man  to  sin,  we  find  the 

1  Cf.  Phoedr.,  p.  247  A  :   ^66vo^  yap  e^cu  Oeiov  xopov  Icrr arai. 

2  It  is  noteworthy  that  Plutarch  counts  the  Jews  among  those 
who  do  not  believe  in  the  goodness  of  God,  on  the  ground,  no 
doubt,  of  certain  vindictive  passages  in  the  Old  Testament. — Moral. , 
p.  1051  e. 


116       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

germ  of  the  idea  that  sin  and  temptation  come  from 
evil  spirits  ;  for  Homer's  Ate  is  such  an  one.  Later, 
in  spite  of  Menander's  protest  ^  that  even  the  daimon 
must  be  imagined  as  wholly  good,  the  belief  in  evil 
spirits  grew  in  intensity,  fortified,  no  doubt,  by  the 
growing  influence  of  magic  ;  and  the  belief  permeated 
deeply  the  later  Neoplatonism  and  Pythagoreanism, 
which  drew  largely  from  Orphic  sources.  It  appears 
strong,  for  instance,  in  Plutarch  ;  for  whom,  as  for 
others,  it  helped  to  solve  the  problem  of  evil  in  such 
a  way  as  to  relieve  the  high  gods  from  all  responsi- 
bility for  it.  A  typical  utterance,  from  this  point  of 
view,  is  that  which  was  attributed  to  Charondas  in 
the  spurious  proems  of  his  Laws :  "  If  a  man  is 
tempted  by  an  evil  spirit,  he  should  pray  in  the 
temples  that  the  evil  spirit  might  be  averted."- 

The  Greek  had  long  been  familiar  with  the  fear  of 
certain  dangerous  unseen  influences,  which  were  to 
be  fended  off  by  apotropasic  rites ;  but  he  did  not 
always  imagine  these  as  personal,  nor  did  he  often 
moralise  them  :  his  Eris  and  Adikia  had  no  strong  hold 
on  the  popular  faith.  Still  less  did  either  the  popular 
imagination  or  the  speculation  of  philosophers  exalt 
the  principle  of  evil  into  a  majestic  personality  such 
as  Satan  or  Ahriman,  on  which  a  dualistic  theology 
and  cosmology  like  the  Persian  might  be  constructed. 

Hitherto  we  have  been  considering  religion  mainly 
under  its  social  and  ethical  aspects.  But  as  Hellenism 
meant  more  than  a  moral  and  orderly  conduct  of  life, 

1  Clem.  Alex.,  Strom.,  5,  p.  260. 

2  Stobae.,  Floril,  44.  20. 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN    RELIGION     117 

and  two  of  its  most  potent  forces  were  science  and 
art,  so  we  find  Greek  religion  takes  more  serious 
cognisance  of  these  than  any  other  rehgion  of  the 
world  has  ever  done.  As  regards  the  rehgious  con- 
secration of  Hellenic  art  the  facts  are  familiar.  In 
the  earlier  period,  when  Greek  art  had  reached  the 
heights  of  its  renown,  the  greatest  of  its  craftsmen 
in  respect  of  their  most  important  commissions 
worked  for  the  State  and  for  the  deity.  This  is  a 
fact  not  uncommon  in  the  history  of  other  civilisa- 
tions. What  is  much  rarer  is  the  religious  pheno- 
menon that  the  artistic  interest  enters  as  a  divine 
attribute  into  the  characters  of  certain  Hellenic 
deities  and  establishes  a  fellowship  between  the 
human  craftsmen  and  the  divine.  Already  in  the 
Homeric  period  the  artist  is  imagined  as  one  dear 
to  Athena :  "  He  whose  hands  had  all  the  carver's 
cunning,  for  Pallas  Athena  loved  him  above  all 
men."^  The  author  of  an  Homeric  hymn^  declares 
that  it  was  thanks  to  the  arts  of  Hephaistos,  the  god 
of  the  smithy-fire,  that  man  was  raised  above  the 
level  of  the  cave-dweller  ;  Plato  speaks  of  the  whole 
race  of  craftsmen  as  sacred  to  Athena  and  Hephaistos ; 
and  in  another  and  more  fanciful  passage  he  expresses 
his  beUef  that  these  two  divinities,  '*  in  their  love  for 
philosophy  and  art,"  chose  Attica  in  the  aboriginal 
period  as  their  home  because  this  land  "  was  specially 
suitable  for  the  development  of  excellence  and 
intelligence."^ 

It   is   in   the   study   of  Greek  music  and  of  the 

1  //.,  5.  59.  -  Horn.,  H.  xx.  3  i^^ws,  p.  920  D. 


118       HIGHER    ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

ancient  philosophic  theories  concerning  it  that  we 
are  confronted  with  facts  of  singular  importance  for 
the  religious  psychology  of  Greece.  It  is  here  that 
the  characteristically  Hellenic  fusion  of  art,  religion, 
and  ethics  is  presented  in  its  most  striking  light.  It 
is  not  merely  that  religion  is  found  giving  laws  to 
art  and  shaping  its  product — the  survey  of  Christian 
art  shows  a  similar  dictation — but,  what  is  rarer  in  the 
history  of  culture,  w^e  find  that  art  itself  was  a  con- 
structive influence  in  the  evolution  of  religion.  This 
phenomenon  I  have  tried  to  expose  and  explain 
elsewhere  in  an  account  of  Apolline  ritual.^  At 
some  early  period,  a  certain  severe  style  of  music, 
chiefly  stringed,  became  a  tradition  of  the  cult  of 
Apollo,  and  helped  to  imprint  upon  the  imagined 
character  of  this  deity  certain  ethical  traits,  so  that 
Apollo  and  Apolline  music  came  to  be  associated 
with  the  noble  self-restraint  of  a  law-abiding  tem- 
perament. The  ethical  poets  and  philosophers  of 
Greece  were  aware  of  this,  and  a  passage  in  Pindar's 
Pythians  is  typical :  '*  He  gives  to  whomsoever  he  will 
the  music  of  the  lyre  and  the  spirit  of  song,  bringing 
into  men's  hearts  the  peaceful  law-abiding  temper."^ 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Dionysiac  worship  being 
essentially  unconcerned  with  the  civic  virtues,  but 
satisfying  the  instinct  for  ecstasy  and  self-abandon- 
ment, and  stimulating  an  intenser  vitality  of  indivi- 
dual consciousness,  was  associated  with  a  wilder  and 
more  lawless  music,  chiefly  of  wind-instruments  and 
generally    with    the    so-called    Phrygian    harmony. 

1  CultSy  vol.  iv.  pp.  243-252.  2  5,  37^ 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN   RELIGION     119 

Hence  arose  a  fundamental  distinction  between  two 
different  types  of  music,  suggested  by  and  reacting 
upon  certain  religious  ideas,  a  distinction  which  in 
the  more  complex  art  of  modern  Europe  we  mark 
between  the  styles,  for  instance,  of  Bach  and  Wagner. 
And  hence  we  can  understand  the  severe  moral  legis- 
lation which  Plato  would  impose  on  the  musicians, 
and  his  preference  for  the  music  of  Apollo  to  the 
music  of  INIarsyas,  who  stands  for  Dionysos/  Aris- 
totle, while  taking  himself  the  same  ethical  view  of 
art,  is  broader-minded  and  justifies  the  orgiastic 
music,  as  he  might  justify  the  Dionysiac  opyua,  as  a 
salutary  outlet  for  pent-up  emotion. 

The  music,  then,  that  through  the  madness  of  its 
ecstasy  relieves  the  passions,  and  the  music  that 
ennobles  and  tranquillises  the  mind,  are  regarded 
equally  as  manifestations  of  divine  power  whereby 
the  godhead  engenders  certain  ethical  and  psychical 
moods  in  man. 

This,  then,  is  one  of  the  salient  features  of  Greek 
religion,  that  more  obviously  than  any  other  it 
regarded  art  as  a  direct  channel  of  spiritual  or 
psychical  communication  between  the  divinity  and 
mankind  :  the  artist  is  the  organ  of  God,^  and  while 
for  us  the  personal  Muses  are  a  pedantic  fiction,  for 
the  Greek  people  they  were  full  and  vital  realities ; 
and   such  a  religious   phenomenon   as   these   figures 

1  Republ,  399. 

2  Dio  Chrysostom  in  his  oration,  De  Dei  Cognitiofie,  regards  such 
art  as  that  of  Pheidias  as  one  of  the  modes  by  which  God  is 
manifested  to  men. 


120       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

could  only  occur  among  a  race  who  so  deeply  felt 
the  divine  or  demoniac  power  of  music  that  they 
could  externalise  it  thus  among  the  supernal  agencies 
of  the  unseen  world. 

No  less  interesting,  both  for  the  special  and  for  the 
comparative  study  of  our  subject,  is  the  question  of 
the  relation  between  Hellenic  religion  and  Hellenic 
science,  for  science  and  art  make  the  double  crown 
of  Hellenism.  But  the  question,  which  really  in- 
volves nothing  less  than  a  detailed  survey  of  the 
various  attitudes  adopted  by  Hellenic  philosophy 
towards  the  popular  beliefs,  is  far  too  extended  for 
this  course,  and  I  can  only  attempt  to  summarise  a 
few  broad  and  essential  facts. 

One  might  dwell  at  length  on  certain  negative 
factors  that  determined  the  relations  between  the 
Greek  priest  and  the  Greek  man  of  science  or  philo- 
sophy. In  the  first  place,  there  was  no  centralised 
or  organised  priesthood  making  dogmatic  claims  to 
any  superior  knowledge  concerning  the  cosmos ;  the 
omniscience  claimed  by  Delphi  for  Apollo  was  mainly 
practical,  nor  did  the  god  pronounce  on  questions  of 
physics  or  metaphysics.  Secondly,  Greek  religion 
had  no  sacred  books,  and  belongs  to  the  class  of 
those  that  Mahomet  specially  condemns ;  it  had  no 
inspired  scriptures  of  which  the  literal  and  dogmatic 
interpretation  could  raise  barriers  against  the  progress 
of  secular  science.  To  say  that  Homer's  poems  were 
the  Greek  Bible  is  a  popular  saying,  all  the  more 
false  and  misleading  because  of  a  slight  ingredient 
of   truth :    for   though    Homer   and    Hesiod    helped 


NATIONAL   AND    HUMANITARIAN   RELIGION     121 

much  in  the  shaping  of  popular  ideas  about  divinity, 
a  man  could  disbelieve  any  particular  statement  in 
Homer  or  Hesiod  without  being  thought  immoral, 
irreligious,    or   a   bad    citizen.       Everyone    was    free 
always  to  say  with  Euripides,  "  These  are  the  unfor- 
tunate stories  of  bards."     There  could,  in  short,  be 
no    orthodoxy    or    heresy    in    old    Hellas,    because 
neither  priesthood  nor  sacred  book  made  any  dogmatic 
demand.     We   recognise,   indeed,    that   to   proclaim 
direct  atheism — at  Athens  at  least,  and  probably  in 
other  Greek  States — was  as  dangerous  as  it  was  to 
introduce  alien  and   unauthorised  worships,  and  we 
can  understand  that  the  civic  rehgion  would  be  pro- 
tected by  law  against  any  deliberate  and  open  attack. 
But  it  had  no  reason  to  consider  itself  endangered 
by  free  speculation  concerning  the  physical  causes  of 
things  and  the  ultimate  laws   of  the  cosmos.     The 
isolated  case  of  persecution  of  science  in  Greek  history 
is  the  expulsion  of  Anaxagoras  from  Athens,  and  of 
that  case  we  do  not  know  the  exact  particulars.     In 
fact,  the  Athenians  were  the  only   Hellenic  people 
that  might   be    charged  with    committing   on  more 
than  one  occasion  the  sin  of  fanaticism. 

Ordinarily  the  path  of  the  thinker  and  scientific 
student  in  Hellas  from  the  sixth  century  onwards  was 
legally  and  practically  safe,  and  to  this  we  may  partly 
ascribe  the  strikingly  swift  and  rich  development  in 
so  many  fields  of  speculation,  and  also  the  tolerant  and 
sometimes  sympathetic  attitude  that  the  philosophers 
adopted  towards  the  popular  polytheism. 

One  other  negative  fact  is  important  in  this  regard. 


122       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

Those  who  wished  to  speculate  and  make  discoveries 
concerning  the  origin  of  man  or  the  ultimate  elements 
of  the  cosmos  need  not  fear  to  awaken  the  prejudices 
of  those  who  put  faith  in  the  early  poets  and  mytho- 
logies of  Greece.  For  there  was  no  accepted  tradi- 
tion concerning  the  birth  of  man  or  his  origin,  no 
belief  consecrated  by  immemorial  story  that  either 
man  or  the  world  was  created  by  a  personal  god. 
Zeus  the  creator  scarcely  figures  at  all  in  Greek 
mythology  and  cult,  which  in  this  respect  differs 
momentously  from  the  Hebraic  and  the  Babylonian. 
For  Homer  water  or  ocean  was  the  origin  of  all 
things,  gods  and  men  included ;  for  Hesiod  chaos,  a 
vague,  indeterminate  cosmic  substance :  here  were 
certain  ideas  congenial  to  a  free  science  which  could 
easily  adapt  them  to  some  secular  theory  of  evolu- 
tion ;  nor  was  the  dictum  of  Herakleitos,  "  Neither 
God  nor  man  made  the  cosmos,"  ^  antagonistic  to  the 
average  theology  as  we  know  it. 

Looking,  then,  at  these  negative  conditions  of  his 
"  milieu,"  we  may  say  that  the  man  of  science  found 
in  Hellas  a  better  opportunity  than  any  that  was 
open  to  him  in  Mesopotamia  or  Israel,  under  Islam 
or  until  recently  under  Christianity. 

But  the  further  question  must  be  considered  whether 
Greek  religion  gave  any  direct  and  positive  encourage- 
ment to  science  or  philosophy.  It  is  not,  of  course, 
likely  that  the  people,  for  whose  average  wants  the 
worship  of  the  city  was  established,  would  feel  so 
strong  an  impulse  towards  these  higher  things  as  to 

1  Clem.  Alex.,  ASYrom.,  5.  14,  p.  711  (By  water,  Fr.  xx.). 


NATIONAL   AND   HUMANITARIAN   RELIGION     123 

invoke  their  deities  in  their  behalf  by  any  cult-title  or 
prayer.  None  of  the  appellatives  of  divinity  used  in  the 
public  liturgies  could  be  given  such  an  interpretation. 
The  personification  of  Aletheia  or  Truth,  as  a  moral 
and  intellectual  force,  which  we  find  occasionally  in 
the  literature,  had  no  Hfe  or  reality  for  the  pubhc. 

Yet  the  pubhc  institutions  of  Hellas  afford  some 
examples  of  the  close  association  between  the  higher 
intellectual  culture  and  the  popular  religion.  The 
schools  and  "palaestrae"  were  consecrated  in  some 
fashion  to  certain  divinities— usually  to  Apollo,  the 
Muses,  Hermes,  or  Herakles.  And  Apollo  was 
designated  by  one  recorded  appellative  as  the  god  of 
the  XeVxat,  or  the  public  colonnades,  the  usual 
meeting-place  at  Athens  for  philosophic  debates.' 
Further,  we  have  good  reason  to  surmise  that  one 
great  branch  of  modern  European  culture,  the  study 
and  practice  of  medicine,  is  much  indebted  indirectly 
and  directly  to  the  worship  of  Asclepios,  which 
developed  at  Epidauros  and  which  from  the  fifth 
century  onwards  expanded  over  the  whole  of  the 
Greek  world,  gaining  a  high  pre-eminence  and  retain- 
ing a  strong  vitality  in  the  latter  days  of  paganism 
and  famiharising  men  with  the  conception  of  the 
divine  Saviour.  An  interesting  inscription  of  the 
fourth  century  b.c.  has  been  found  at  Epidauros, 
containing  a  long  list  of  cures  and  revealing,  amidst 
a  prevailing  atmosphere  of  dream-magic  and  miracle, 
a  glimmering  of  science  nevertheless.  And  Hippo- 
krates,  the  father  of  our  medical  science,  was  believed 

1    Fide  my  Cults,  vol.  iv.  p.  241,  n.c. 


124       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

to  have  derived  his  experience  from  the  Asklepios- 
shrine  at  Kos.^ 

But,  generally,  the  presiding  divinity  of  the  intel- 
lectual life  of  Greece  was  Apollo  of  Delphi ;  for  as 
after  the  fifth  century  the  oracle  lost  its  political 
power,  it  became  rather  the  organ  for  the  higher 
pubhc  opinion  on  moral  and  spiritual  matters,  and 
this  opinion  was  supposed  to  emanate  from  or  to  be 
sanctioned  by  the  god.  For  the  priests  were  wise 
enough  to  appropriate  and  enshrine  in  their  temple 
fragments  of  the  best  thought  of  the  philosophers, 
inscribing  the  walls,  for  instance,  with  maxims  of  the 
higher  ethic.  The  desire  of  the  oracle  to  express 
itself  in  the  world  of  intellect  is  signalised  by 
the  famous  dehverance  concerning  the  intellectual 
supremacy  of  Socrates  ;  and  again  by  its  utterance 
communicated  to  the  philosopher  Zeno,  bidding  him 
"  to  hold  intercourse  with  the  dead,"  a  phrase  enjoin- 
ing a  life  of  contemplative  study.^  Again,  a  late 
writer  speaks  of  the  philosophic  life  as  the  life  "  which 
Diogenes  chose  freely,  the  life  which  Apollo  assigned 
and  Zeus  commended."^ 

Hellenic  religion,  though  deeply  concerned  with 
morality  and  helping  in  many  ways  to  establish  a  moral 
order  of  society,  was  doubtless  inferior  as  a  moral  force 
to  the  Hebraic.  But  it  may  claim  for  itself  the  unique 
achievement  that  it  proclaimed  the  divine  consecration 
of  the  intellectual  life  ;  and  our  modern  civilisation 
may  have  yet  to  gather  some  of  the  fruits  of  this  idea. 

1   Op.  ciL,  pp.  i240-241.  2   Op.  ciL,  p.  242,  n.c. 

3  Max.  Tyr.,  Dissert.,  36.  5. 


LECTURE   VI 

PERSONAL    AND    INDIVIDUAL   RELIGION 

The  subject  which  I  have  reserved  for  the  close  of 
this  course  will  be  judged  as  of  far  the  greatest 
importance  by  those  who  are  only  familiar  with  the 
phenomena  of  our  modern  religion  and  religious 
experience.  On  the  other  hand,  the  student  of  the 
old-world  and  pre-Christian  systems  of  cult  is  apt 
to  be  so  impressed  with  their  social  and  corporate 
character  that  he  is  tempted  to  ignore  the  question 
of  their  personal  effect  on  the  individual ;  and  indeed 
the  surviving  records  of  some  of  them  are  wholly 
public  and  political,  and  give  us  no  glimpse  of  their 
inner  relations  to  the  individual  soul.  But  where  the 
records  speak  at  all  on  this  question,  it  must  always 
be  one  of  high  special  as  well  as  general  interest ;  for 
it  offers  a  test  whereby  the  intelHgent  modern  can 
determine  the  degree  of  affinity  between  any  other 
religion  and  his  own  ;  also  it  makes  its  own  contribu- 
tion towards  the  classification  of  religions  as  lower 
and  higher ;  since  a  religion  that  was  wholly  tribal 
or  corporate,  that  addressed  itself  exclusively  to  the 
public  or  the  group — whether  nation,  city,  clan,  or 

125 


126       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

family — having  no  relations  or  communication  with 
the  individual,  would  be  classed  as  one  of  an  embry- 
onic or  lower  type  ;  for  any  society  must  be  regarded 
as  backward  or  prematurely  stereotyped  if  its  corpor- 
ate consciousness  is  so  all-pervading  that  the  individual 
soul  cannot  free  itself  and  make  its  isolated  appeal  or 
determine  its  private  relation  to  the  unseen  world. 
Certainly   in    these    few    thousand   years    we    have 
strangely   shifted   our   point    of    view.      But    it    is 
doubtful  if  such  a  rigidly  corporate  religion  as  has 
just  been  imagined  ever  existed  on  the  earth  ;  at  any 
rate,  the   Hellenic  was  never  such.     At  any  period 
of  Hellenic  religious  history  of  which  we  dare  speak, 
the  Hellenic  individual  was  doubtless  awake,  and  the 
most  severe  corporate  and  socialistic  discipline  such 
as  the  Lycurgean  could  not  suppress  his  voice.     And 
the  record  of  his  voice  is  far  from  scanty  ;  in  fact,  so 
ample  and  manifold  that  to  expose  it  in  full  would 
demand  nothing  less  than  the  study  of  Homer,  the 
lyric  poets,  the  dramatists,  philosophers,  and  historians 
of  Greece.      And    all   this    is   the   theme   of  many 
treatises  by  distinguished  scholars.      The   utmost   I 
can   now   hope   to   effect   is   to    indicate    the  main 
questions  that  the  inquiry  involves,   to  present  the 
chief  sources  of  evidence,    and   to    determine   what 
general  conclusions  can  be  safely  drawn. 

The  question  concerning  the  personal  religion  of 
any  nation  or  any  age  may  be  investigated  on  the 
following  lines :  we  may  look  to  the  average  mass  of 
the  people  and  consider  how  far  they  are  quickened 
with   a   fervent   religious   zeal,    also    how   far    their 


PERSONAL   AND   INDIVIDUAL   RELIGION        127 

practice  is  guided  and  influenced  by  the  accepted 
religious  ideals ;  whether  the  private  conscience 
appears  keenly  susceptible  to  the  sense  of  sin  and  the 
idea  of  moral  responsibility  ;  whether  there  is  a  grow- 
ing or  a  prevalent  desire  for  a  closer  personal  com- 
munion with  the  divinity  than  may  be  offered  by  the 
established  public  worship.  Or  we  may  consider  the 
few  choice  spirits  of  each  age,  those  who  assume  the 
role  of  prophets  and  original  thinkers  on  rehgious 
matters,  and  we  may  collect  their  utterances  as 
materials  for  a  history  of  higher  religious  thought : 
we  must  then  endeavour  to  determine  whether  they 
have  initiated  or  represented  a  movement  that  pene- 
trated far  into  the  masses'  or  whether  they  spoke  for 
themselves  only  without  influence  on  their  own  or 
later  generations.  In  any  case,  they  interest  deeply 
the  student  of  this  subject,  for  its  history  is  chiefly 
the  record  of  such  men,  while  it  is  often  obliged  to 
be  silent  about  the  average  man  of  the  past  for 
want  of  material  by  which  to  judge  him  from  this 
point  of  view. 

Perhaps  no  ancient  religion  has  left  so  rich  a  store 
of  evidence  as  the  Hellenic  in  both  these  directions. 
And  yet  some  of  the  questions  posed  above  may 
be  found  impossible  to  answer  with  precision :  for 
instance,  how  far  in  the  various  periods  of  Hellenic 
history  the  individual  was  personally  zealous  con- 
cerning this  corporate  religion  of  which  I  have  been 
trying  to  indicate  the  moral  potentialities,  also  how  far 
it  afforded  an  active  stimulus  to  his  will  and  conduct 
to  endeavour  to  realise  its  ideals.     The  last  question 


128       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

is  almost  hopeless  ;  for,  as  we  are  not  near  to  possess- 
ing sufficient  moral  statistics    for  judging  our  own 
present,  we  are  not  likely  to  possess  them  in  such 
measure  as  to  gauge  accurately  any  period  of  the  past. 
Hence  our  judgments  on  such  matters  are  apt  to 
be  rhetorical  and  vague,  and  we  contradict  each  other 
irresponsibly  in  speaking  of  the  moral  decadence  of 
one  age  compared  with  another.     It  is  easier  to  write 
a  history  of  Greek  religion  than  a  history  of  Greek 
ethical  practice.      Furthermore,  in   forming   our  in- 
ductions on  this    subject,    we   must   beware   of  the 
assumption,  which  experience  shows  to  be  fallacious, 
that    general    immorality    is    a    proof     of    general 
scepticism  or  that  intensity  of  religious  feeling  is  an 
indication  of  high  morality ;    the   forces  of  the  two 
spheres  are  not  so  easily  correlated  and  do  not  always 
wax  and  wane  together.     Only   sometimes,  in   fact, 
and  in  particular  cases  where  some  salient  evidence  is 
preserved,  are  we  able  to  form  a  tolerably  sure  judg- 
ment concerning  the  sympathy  between  the   moral 
practice  and  the  religious  conviction  of  the  individual 
in  ancient  Greece.     I  cannot  now,  of  course,  test  this 
statement  in  detail ;  but  will  mention  merely  a  few 
outstanding  examples  where  a  careful  study  of  the 
facts  reveals  to  us,  we  must  believe,  a  glimpse  into 
the   personal    and   individual    mind   of  the    average 
Hellene.     If  he  was  fervent  and  zealous  about  any 
part  of  his  social  creed,  he   was    zealous    about   the 
morality   and   religion   associated   with    his    family- 
hearth    and   family-tomb  ;   the  proof  of  this  is  writ 
large  over  the  monuments  and  literature  of  Hellenic 


PERSONAL   AND   INDIVIDUAL   RELIGION        129 

polytheism.  Again,  if  his  rehgious  and  ethical  creed 
were  almost  silent  concerning  the  duty  of  ordinary 
truthfulness — and  the  Hellene's  reputation  in  this 
respect  was  low — yet  he  was  most  sensitive  in  regard 
to  perjury,  and  his  moral  feeling  concerning  the 
sanctity  of  the  oath  was  vitalised  by  the  forces  of  an 
immemorial  religion ;  nor  have  we  any  reason  to 
suppose  that  the  morality  of  an  Athenian  law-court 
was  in  this  matter  inferior  to  that  which  prevails  in 
our  own.  Again,  the  horror  of  all  civil  bloodshed, 
which  grew  ever  stronger  in  the  later  period  and 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  transcended  the  limitations 
of  the  older  clan-morality,  was  a  phenomenon  that 
should  figure  prominently  in  the  record  of  personal 
morality  in  Greece ;  and  it  was  rooted  deeply  in 
religious  sentiment,  being  associated  both  with  the 
higher  theistic  thought  and  with  the  pervading  awe 
of  the  world  of  avenging  ghosts. 

A  striking  example  is  the  record  in  Plutarch  of 
the  horror  which  was  excited  in  Athens  by  the  news 
of  a  fearful  civic  massacre  in  Argos :  such  tidings, 
they  felt,  polluted  their  own  air,  and  they  ordered  a 
purification  of  their  whole  assembly.^ 

The  immorality  of  certain  Greek  myths  concerning 
the  deities  has  sometimes  been  a  stumbling-block  to 
the  belief  that  the  religion  was  closely  interwoven 
with  the  higher  personal  morality  of  the  people. 
We  may  evade  this  difficulty  by  maintaining  that 
religion — that  is  to  say,  worship  and  serious  thoughts 
about  the  deity — is  often  independent  of  the  popular 
1  Plut.,  p.  814  B-C. 


130       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

tales  about  the   divine   personages ;   folk-stories  are 
irresponsible   and   rarely  satisfy  the  higher  religious 
consciousness.      Greek  worship   was   generally   pure 
and  solemn,  expressed   in    forms   that   were  usually 
beautiful   and  often  elevating,  while  the  mythology 
was  sometimes  frivolous  and  impure.     Moreover,  it 
is  always  to  be  remembered  that  there  were  no  sacred 
books  enshrining  it,  which  it  was  an  article  of  faith 
to  believe ;    it  was  to  this   extent  less  powerful  to 
exercise   a   harmful   moral    influence.     Nevertheless, 
we  have  reason  to  suspect  that  there    were    certain 
temperaments  that  could  be  evilly  affected    by  this 
element  in   the   old   legends ;   the   chief  speaker   in 
Plato's  Euthyphron  justifies    his    unnatural   severity 
against  his  father  by  the  example  of  Zeus,^  and  we 
have  other  instances  in  Greek  literature  of  detrimental 
morality  based  on  mythic  parallels.     Therefore  Plato 
is  seriously  anxious  to  purify  Greek  mythology,  and 
many  earnest  passages  in  Attic  tragedy  and  Pindar's 
Odes  show  the  same  endeavour.-     It  is  also  fair  to 
bear  in  mind  that  there  was  much  also  in  the  divine 
and  heroic  sagas  which  the  higher  literature  was  able 
to  use  for  moral  and  didactic  effect ;  this  is  specially 
noticeable  in  Pindar,  who  actually  preaches  the  doc- 
trine  of  mercy  and   forgiveness  to  his  royal  patron 
Arkesilas    on    the    text    of    the    legend   that    Zeus 
pardoned  and  released  the  Titans. 

1  p.  5  E-6  A. 

2  Cf.  Theognis,  1345;  /Esch.,  Eum.,  641;  Aristoph.,  A"w6.,  904. 
1080  ;  for  other  examples  vide  Leopold  Schmidt,  Ethic  dcr  Alien 
Griechen,  pp.  J  36-1 37. 


PERSONAL   AND   INDIVIDUAL   RELIGION        131 

We  cannot  hope  to  estimate  exactly  what  was  the 
moral  influence  of  Greek  mythology  for  good  or  for 
evil.  But  comparative  history  teaches  us  that  the 
futilities  and  improprieties  of  religious  folk-lore  are 
often  powerless  to  choke  the  development  of  a  high 
ethical  religion  in  the  community  and  an  ideal  re- 
ligious temperament  in  the  individual.  The  Baby- 
lonian literature  affords  us  a  striking  example  of 
this.  And  Homer  himself  was  aware  of  men  of 
devout  temperaments,  for  whom  religion  was  a  real 
power  whatever  idle  stories  might  be  told  at  banquets. 
He  has  left  us  the  portrait  of  the  pious  swineherd, 
whose  religious  impulses  are  strikingly  humanitarian 
and  seem  to  arise  from  the  inner  principle  of  con- 
science;  and  a  poet  who  in  defiance  of  omens  and 
superstition  could  utter  the  great  phrase,  "  Best  of 
omens  is  it  to  fight  for  one's  native  land,"  was  capable 
of  shaking  off*  the  fetters  of  conventional  tribal 
thought  and  of  penetrating  to  the  heart  of  things 
moral  and  religious. 

The  testimony  of  the  Homeric  poems  may  be 
consulted  also  on  another  of  the  questions  posed 
above  as  relevant  to  the  present  subject — namely, 
whether  in  the  earlier  or  later  period  the  Hellenic 
conscience  had  developed  a  high  degree  of  sensi- 
tiveness to  sin?  Naturally  it  is  only  a  question  of 
degree  and  comparative  intensity;  for  the  psychic 
phenomenon,  the  consciousness  of  sin,  is  found  in 
races  at  nearly  every  stage  of  culture,  wherever,  in 
fact,  moraUty  itself  is  found.  Homer  himself  is 
sufficiently  alive  to  it,  as  many   passages   might  be 


182       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

adduced  to  prove,  while  that  which  has  been  quoted 
already  from  the  speech  of  Phoenix  is  evidence 
enough:  ''Men  turn  aside  the  wrath  of  the  gods 
with  sacrifice  and  prayers  .  .  .  when  a  man  has 
committed  trespass  and  sin,"  and  the  value  of  such 
illustrations  is  not  at  all  affected  by  the  fact  that 
the  poems  make  no  mention  of  a  peculiar  form 
of  piacular  sacrifice,  the  holocaust  or  sin  -  offering. 
With  these  the  later  Greek  ritual,  both  public  and 
private,  was  familiar,  and  they  are  part  of  ancient 
Mediterranean  tradition ;  nor  would  it  be  difficult 
to  gather  from  the  records  of  Greek  worship  examples 
of  gloomy  and  sorrowful  liturgy  and  ceremony. 

But  we  have  no  right  to  suppose  that  these  were 
usually  accompanied  by  any  clear  conviction  of  sin, 
either  communal  or  private.  And  Robertson  Smith's 
dictum,  that  all  religions  of  the  antique  tribal  type 
were  normally  cheerful  and  genial,  as  the  bond 
between  the  deity  and  the  worshipper  was  one  of 
kinship  and  mutual  kindhness,  certainly  applies  in 
the  main  to  the  Hellenic.  A  genial  sense  of  "  cama- 
raderie "  was  inspired  and  maintained  by  sacred  dance, 
song,  and  simple  prayer,  and  especially  by  the 
sacrificial  banquet  at  which  the  deity  and  his  tribe 
were  imagined  as  feasting  together.  And  whatever 
ritual  was  in  vogue  for  the  purging  of  the  people's 
sins  was  external  and  mechanical  merely,  accom- 
panied by  no  call  to  real  repentance,  no  appeal  to 
the  individual  conscience.  No  prayer  or  formula  has 
been  handed  down  from  the  pre-Christian  religion 
of    Hellas    that    sounds    the    note    of    "  Miserere 


PERSONAL   AND   INDIVIDUAL   RELIGION        133 

Domine."  Nor  is  it  heard  anywhere  in  the  higher 
hterature ;  the  agony  of  remorse  in  an  (Edipus  or  a 
Herakles  Mainomenos  is  not  the  agony  of  repentance 
in  the  modern  sense.  Even  the  rehgious-minded 
iEschylus,  when  he  describes  the  natural  ways 
whereby  the  sinner  might  hope  to  avert  or  soften 
the  wrath  of  God,^  can  only  think  of  various  forms 
of  sacrifices,  blood-offerings,  or  oblations  of  fruits. 
Tears,  prostration,  the  body  cleaving  to  the  pave- 
ment in  abject  ecstasy  of  repentance — these  and 
similar  piacular  methods  were  as  familiar  to  the  early 
Babylonian  as  to  the  later  Hebrew  and  Christian ; 
they  were  wholly  unfamiliar  to  the  Hellene  and  alien 
to  the  religious  spirit  of  Hellenism,  in  which  can 
be  found  scarcely  a  touch  of  sentimentality,  no 
servility,  and  no  extravagant  proneness  to  ecstasy. 
His  religious  enthusiasm  tended  to  express  itself  in 
measured  movement,  orderly  music,  and  song.  The 
gulf  between  him  and  the  divinity  did  not  appear  to 
him  so  vast,  the  divine  nature  so  ineffable,  so  far 
above  the  standard  of  our  moral  life,  as  to  crush  him 
with  a  sense  of  his  own  unworthiness.  Such  feeling 
was  natural  to  the  Semite  and  other  Orientals ;  it 
is  prominent  in  Babylonian  liturgies  and  hymns, 
in  which  the  worshipper  abases  himself  utterly  as  a 
slave  before  his  deity.  The  phrase,  SouXo?  rov  Oeov — 
"  the  slave  of  God " — common  in  early  Christian 
inscriptions,  came  into  the  Greek  Church  from  the 
East,    and    would    have   seemed    an    unnatural    and 

i   In   the    Niobe   Frag.,   136;  cf.  my  article   in  Classical  Review, 
1897,  pp.  296-297. 


134       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

unworthy  expression  to  the  earher  Hellene:  signifi- 
cant evidence  is  offered  by  a  bihngual  inscription 
found  in  Malta  containing  a  dedication  by  Phoenicians 
and  Greeks  to  the  same  divinity  ; '  the  formula?  used 
are  mainly  the  same,  except  that  the  Phoenicians 
style  themselves  "  the  slaves  of  God,"  and  the  Greeks 
omit  that  conventional  phrase  of  abasement. 

Also  it  belongs  to  the  present  point  of  view  to 
observe  that  no  Greek  religious  or  philosophic 
thinker  ever  came  to  formulate  explicitly  any 
doctrine  of  original  sin.  The  germ  of  such  a  theory 
could  be  detected  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Orphic 
sects,  which,  being  founded  on  a  religion  in  its  origin 
non- Hellenic,  derived  man's  complex  nature  partly 
from  a  primally  good,  partly  from  a  primally  evil, 
source ;  and  Plato  was  somewhat  indebted  to.  them 
for  his  unfortunate  theory  of  the  body  as  the  impure 
prison-house  of  the  soul,  a  theory  destructive  of  the 
race-instinct  of  Hellenism.  Platonic  and  later  Greek 
thought  contributed  material  indeed  to  the  building 
up  of  the  dogma  of  original  sin  and  the  essential 
evil  of  the  sense-life;  but  it  was  not  completed 
within  the  Hellenic  period  proper,  nor  ever  brought 
home  to  the  consciousness  and  faith  of  the  average 
pre-Christian  Hellene.  Sin  in  the  abstract,  sin  as  a 
dark  and  all-pervading  element  of  man's  inner  life, 
was  not  reahsed  by  him  ;  he  could  only  feel  the  sting 
of  particular  sins,  and  for  these  only  could  he  wish 
to  atone,  of  these  to  repent. 

But  we   have   evidence  clear   and   trustworthy  to 

1  Corp.  Inscr.  Semit.,  i.  No.  122. 


PERSONAL   AND   INDIVIDUAL   RELIGION        135 

show  that  his  moral  rehgious  consciousness  was 
growing  more  and  more  sensitive  from  the  eighth 
century  onwards  in  one  direction — namely,  in  regard 
to  the  sense  of  purity  and  impurity,  a  sense  that 
was  often,  but  not  always  or  necessarily,  associated 
with  the  world  of  ghosts  and  of  ghostly  influences. 
At  iirst  the  idea  of  purity  was  ritualistic  merely,  and 
therefore  non-moral — associated  with  washing  of 
hands,  abstinence  from  certain  food  or  from  contact 
with  the  dead  ;  but  at  least,  by  the  fifth  century 
B.C.,  it  had  engendered  the  higher  spiritual  doctrine 
of  purity  of  heart  and  thought.  In  a  former  course 
of  lectures  I  have  tried  to  sketch  the  points  in  this 
progress.^  And  the  subject  only  concerns  our 
present  inquiry  because  this  craving  for  purity  as  a 
psychic  state  is  a  phenomenon  of  individualistic 
religion,  for  it  appeals  mainly  to  the  inner  religious 
consciousness  of  the  personal  and  private  soul.  If 
all  the  community  are  sensitive  to  this  emotion  in 
the  same  degree,  it  may  have  its  social  value ;  for  a 
man  may  shrink  from  incurring  stain,  lest  he  spread 
the  miasma  of  impurity  around  his  fellows.  More- 
over, certain  communal  effects  of  this  cathartic 
instinct  have  already  been  observed  ;  and  if  a  whole 
tribe  or  community  comes  to  regard  itself  as  specially 
pure,  its  national  consciousness  may  be  quickened 
thereby,  but  generally  in  antagonism  to  other 
communities.  More  often  we  find  that  intense 
punctiliousness  in  matters  of  purity  makes  for 
egoism    or   sectarianism    in   religion.     It  is   rarely  a 

^   Evolution  of  Religion,  pp.  88-162. 


136       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

bond  of  broad  social  union.  So  far  as  it  brings 
men  together,  it  shuts  them  off  into  small  groups, 
private  societies  of  the  elite,  who  are  not  as  other 
men.  The  two  most  powerful  examples  of  such 
societies  in  the  Greece  of  the  sixth  and  the  succeed- 
ing centuries  were  the  Orphic  and  Pythagorean 
brotherhoods,  whose  rules  of  purity  were  severe  and 
fantastic.  And  such  mystic  brotherhoods,  each 
usually  possessing  special  rites  of  purification,  were 
multiplying  fast  in  the  fourth  and  third  centuries  ; 
and  their  general  effect  was  against  the  communal 
spirit  of  the  older  social  religion.  The  Pythagoreans 
demand  to  be  buried  in  special  consecrated  ground, 
fearing  even  after  death  the  impure  contact  of  the 
uninitiated. 

In  its  relation  to  advanced  religion,  the  value  of 
an  elaborate  purification-system  is  merely  negative  ;  it 
merely  frees  the  body  or  the  soul  of  the  individual 
from  evil  influences  that  render  it  unfit  for  com- 
munion with  the  divinity.  That  has  still  to  be 
sought  by  positive  methods. 

One  such  method  had  been  from  time  immemorial 
the  sacrifice.  For  in  the  earlier  period  at  least,  and 
frequently  also  in  the  later,  the  offering  of  the  animal 
at  the  altar  was  felt  to  be  something  more  than  a 
bribe  to  the  deity.  The  holy  spirit  of  the  altar  passed 
into  the  animal  that  was  consecrated  and  brought 
into  contact  with  it ;  and  those  who  afterwards 
partook  of  it  might  be  conscious  of  eating  holy  flesh 
and  thus  enjoying  temporary  communion  with  the 
spirit  of  the  divinity.     And  in  other  details   of  the 


PERSONAL   AND   INDIVIDUAL   RELIGION        137 

Homeric  sacrifice  and  in  ritual  records  of  the  later 
period  we  can,  I  think,  discover  clear  traces  of  sacra- 
mental communion.^ 

But,  after  all,  such  intercourse  with  the  divinity 
so  gained  belongs  still  to  the  communal  and  tribal 
religion  ;  it  did  not  oifer  to  the  individual  worshipper 
the  pecuHar  privilege  of  a  nearer  and  more  private 
intimacy  with  the  godhead.  Now,  the  average  Greek 
may  have  remained  satisfied  down  to  the  sixth 
century  with  this  general  clan-communion  with  the 
clan-deity;  and  there  is  a  curious  fragment  of  a 
Hesiodic  poem  extant  in  which  the  poet  seems  to 
protest  against  the  hope  of  familiar  loving  intercourse 
between  gods  and  men.^ 

But  at  some  time,  probably  shortly  after  the  period 
of  Hesiod,  two  phenomena  begin  to  exercise  an 
influence  that  worked  powerfully  in  favour  of  a  more 
personal  and  individualistic  religion  freed  from  the 
fetters  of  clan  and  tribe  ;  these  were  the  expansion  of 
the  Eleusinian  mysteries,  and  the  establishment  of 
the  Orphic  brotherhoods.  The  first  event  must  have 
happened  before  the  composition  of  the  Homeric 
hymn  to  Demeter — that  is,  not  later  than  600  B.C.— 
for  in  that  hymn  the  whole  Hellenic  world  is  en- 
couraged to  come  to  Eleusis  to  receive  the  blessings 
of  initiation  into  the  mysteries  of  the  Mother  and  the 
Maid.     There  is  no  doubt  that   many  alien    Greeks 

1  Fide  my  article,  "  Sacramental  Communion  in  Greek  Religion," 
Hihhert  Journ.,  1904. 

2  Fragment  of  the  Eoiai,  96  (Rzach,  p.  l63)  :  Zeus  is  said  to  have 
brought  on  the  Trojan  war  in  order  that  the  immortals,  seeing  the 
sad  fates  of  men,  might  no  longer  stoop  to  mortal  lovers. 


138       HIGHER    ASPECTS    OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

came  to  avail  themselves  of  that  invitation  ;  the  alien 
found  himself  there  as  one  of  a  large  group  of  cate- 
chumens ;   but   these   were  bound  by  no   gentile   or 
corporate  bond,  for  each  was  there  for  the  good  of 
his   individual   soul,    seeking    to    establish    intimate 
personal  relations  with  the  goddesses.^  /  An  elaborate 
ritual   of  purification    was    prescribed    whereby  the 
candidate  was  spiritually  prepared  for  this  communion. 
And  it  has  been  supposed  that  the  means  of  grace 
included  a  form  of  sacrament,  the   drinking   of  the 
sacred  cup  into  which  the  personality  of  the  goddess 
might    be    infused    by    transubstantiation ;    but   the 
evidence  does  not  allow  us  to  interpret  this  part  of 
the  ritual  with  certainty."     What  is  clear  is  that  the 
fully  initiated  were  privileged  to  see  holy  and  mystic 
things,   and  that  the  revelation  of  these  established 
between  the  individual  and  the  great  goddesses  of  life 
and  death  a  close  and  personal  tie,  whereby  his  happi- 
ness after  death  was  assured.^  i  By  the  time  when  these 
great  mysteries  of  Eleusis  became  pan-Hellenic,  this 
was  probably  their  sole  appeal  to  the  peoples  outside 
Attica — namely,  their  promise  of  posthumous  salva- 
tion ;  and  the  craving  for  this  grew  ever  stronger  in 
the  Hellenic  world  from  the  sixth  century  till  the  end 
of  paganism.     The  old  state-cults  of  the  high  deities 
possessed  neither  the  power  nor  the  desire  to  gratify 
this :  hence  chiefly  we  may  explain  the  long-abiding 

1  Except  perhaps  the  Trat?  acf>  eo-rta?,  who  may  have  repre- 
sented the  youth  of  the  Athenian  State.  Fide  my  Cults,  vol.  iii. 
p.  l64. 

2  Vide  Cults,  vol.  iii.  pp.  1 94-1 97. 


PERSONAL   AND   INDIVIDUAL   RELIGION        139 

influence  and  fascination  which  attached  to  the 
Eleusinian  mysteries  down  to  the  Christian  period. 
A  kindred  phenomenon  is  the  emergence  of  the 
Orphic  brotherhoods,  based  on  certain  mystic  ele- 
ments in  the  Dionysiac  worship  that  were  ultimately 
derived  from  Thrace.  These  sects  were  beginning  to 
make  themselves  felt  as  a  new  force  in  the  sixth 
century  B.C.,  and  in  the  fifth  and  fourth  centuries 
were  perhaps  the  strongest  religious  influence  in  the 
Hellenic  world.  Like  the  Eleusinia,  they  strongly 
proclaimed  the  promise  of  posthumous  happiness : 
and  they  were  even  less  fettered  than  that  other 
organisation  by  the  old  bonds  of  kinship,  tribe,  or 
status  ;  for  while  the  privileges  of  the  Eleusinia  were 
lonof  limited  to  Hellenes,  and  later  were  extended 
only  to  Roman  citizens]  it  appears  that  the  Orphic 
brotherhoods  preached  to  the  whole  world,  Greek 
and  barbarian,  bond  and  free.  Therefore  the  renown 
is  theirs  of  being  the  first  world-religion  bearing  a  free 
message.  Their  means  of  grace  were  a  ritual  of 
purification  more  elaborate  than  the  Eleusinia  and 
fixed  as  a  perpetual  rule  of  life,  and  at  times  a  mystic 
sacrament,  in  which  the  initiated  drank  the  blood  or 
devoured  the  body  of  his  god.  The  form  was  savage, 
but  the  act  was  pregnant  of  religious  consequences. 
Also,  apart  from  its  ritual,  which  may  have  been  not 
always  the  same  in  each  locality,  the  Orphic  religion 
proclaimed  a  certain  doctrine  concerning  the  origin 
of  the  world  and  of  man.  And  of  this  what  concerns 
us  most  is  the  dogma  that  man  is  by  origin  half- 
divine   and  is  of  the  kindred  of  God ;  that  even    in 


140       HIGHER    ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

this  life  man  can  attain  temporarily  to  divine  com- 
munion, and  that  in  the  next  world  the  initiated  and 
ceremoniously  purified  soul  can  after  a  further  period 
of  purgation  enter  into  fellowship  with  the  deity 
for  ever. 

We  have  here,  then,  in  developed  form  a  personal 
individual  religion  of  strong  vitality.  Only,  looking 
to  its  origin,  we  cannot  regard  it  as  belonging  to  pure 
Hellenism.  It  might,  indeed,  with  its  morbid  in- 
sistence on  ritual-purity,  its  egoistic  craving  for 
personal  salvation,  its  indifference  to  social  morality,^ 
be  regarded  as  the  natural  antagonist  of  the  Hellenic 
civic  system  and  civic  spirit ;  and  to  have  hastened 
the  decay  of  the  old  society.  Plato  may  for  this 
reason  among  others  have  regarded  it  as  dangerous. 
But  we  must  not  exaggerate  its  influence  or  preva- 
lence, of  which  we  have  no  trustworthy  statistics.  It 
set  the  fashion,  indeed,  for  the  formation  of  private 
religious  societies,  which  became  ever  more  numerous 
in  the  third  and  second  centuries  B.C.  ;  but  though 
many  of  these  were  devoted  to  alien  deities,  we  find 
many  others  consecrated  to  the  traditional  powers  of 
Hellas.^  They  must  not,  therefore,  generally  be 
regarded  as  hostile  to  the  old  pantheon ;  but  they  all 
indicate  a  change  in  the  religious  temper,  a  craving 

1  One  effort  towards  the  moral  reform  of  society  was  attributed 
to  Pythagoras  and  his  disciples,  but  only  by  the  late  witness 
lamblichus,  who  describes  how  the  philosopher  preached  against 
the  sexual  licence  prevailing  at  Kroton  and  persuaded  the  men  of 
this  city  to  be  more  faithful  to  their  wives  :  De  Fit.  Pythag.,  132. 

2  Foucart,  Associations  Religieuses,  pp.  108-109,  tends  to  ignore 
this. 


PERSONAL   AND   INDIVIDUAL   RELIGION        141 

for  a  more  personal,  more  individual,  relation  with 
God.  How  far  these  free  religious  brotherhoods  and 
mystic  societies  directed  the  conduct  and  morality  of 
the  members,  is  a  question  which  there  is  no  sufficient 
evidence  to  answer  definitely.  We  may  dismiss,  at 
least,  the  occasional  charges  of  immorality.  A  priori 
we  should  suppose  that  where  the  deities  were  con- 
ceived as  righteous,  merciful,  and  pure,  as  on  the 
whole  was  the  case  at  Eleusis,  the  quickened  and 
intensified  sense  of  fellowship  between  them  and  the 
initiated  would  give  some  stimulus  to  a  higher  stan- 
dard of  conduct  henceforth  ;  and  there  is  some  slight 
evidence  that  foul  action  on  the  part  of  one  who  had 
passed  through  the  Eleusinia  was  considered  as 
specially  scandalous.^  But  the  voice  of  antiquity  is 
generally  silent  concerning  any  claim  of  the  Mystai 
to  possess  a  higher  morality ;  with  the  exception  of  a 
single  passage  in  Diodorus  Siculus  '^  maintaining  that 
those  who  had  been  initiated  into  the  mysteries  of 
Samothrace  became  generally  more  righteous  than 
they  had  been  before.  But  these  rites  were  un- 
Hellenic,  or,  at  the  best,  only  half-Hellenised. 

Whatever  view  we  take  on  this  ethical  question, 
we  must  recognise  that  the  increased  tension  of 
religious  energy  and  consciousness  in  the  individual 
is  an  important  phenomenon  in  his  mental  history 
and  in  the  history  of  society,  apart  from  its  ethical 
effects. 

One  result  of  this  deeper  sense  of  nearness  to  the 
unseen  powers  is  that  religion  becomes  more  inward, 

1  Fide  my  Cults,  vol.  iii.  p.  191.  ^  5,  49. 


142       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

more  concerned  with  the  personal  spirit  of  man  than 
with  the  external  and  mechanical  acts  of  ritual 
performed  by  the  groups  of  worshippers.  And  this 
change  in  its  centre  of  interest  can  be  traced  in  the 
literature  down  from  an  early  period. 

One  utterance  often  delivered  by  spiritual  religion 
is  that  man's  good  consists  not  in  external  prosperity 
but  in  a  certain  inner  condition  of  soul :  the  earliest 
example  of  this  idea  in  Greek  literature  is  a  fragment 
of  Hesiod,^  belonging  to  the  poetical  contest  between 
himself  and  Homer,  in  which  the  latter  poet  is  asked, 
"  What  of  all  things  is  the  best  to  pray  the  gods  for  ? " 
and  answers,  **  One  should  pray  that  one  may  be  law- 
abiding  in  one's  soul  for  ever."  Here  is  the  germ  of 
a  spiritual  ethic  developed  by  Plato,  Socrates,  and 
the  later  thinkers.^ 

r  The  religious  stress  thus  laid  upon  the  soul  evoked 
much  new  spiritual  thought  of  great  import  for  our 
mental  history.  In  the  higher  religious  theory  the 
idea  becomes  dominant  that  God  sees  the  heart  of 
man  and  judges  us  by  our  thoughts  and  intentions  as 

i_  well  as  by  our  outer  actions ;  it  receives  its  first 
expression,  so  far  as  our  record  goes,  in  Pittakos  and 
Thales,  for  to  both  is  attributed  the  same  answer  to 
the  question  :    "  Are  the  gods  cognisant  of  every  sin 

1  Ho7)i.  el  Hes.  Certain.,  fr.  158  Rzach. 
.  -  Cf.  the  prayer  of  Socrates,  Plat.,  Phcedr.,  279  B  :  Sot'i^re  /xot  KaXw 
/  yevecrOai  ravSoOev,  and  the  sentiment  attributed  to  Bias  of  Priene, 
"  Despise  all  those  things  that  you  will  not  need  when  you  are 
released  from  the  body,  but  those  things  that  you  will  need  then, 
discipline  yourself  to  attain  and  invoke  the  gods  to  help  you" 
\  (Stoba?.,  Flor.j  E.  30);  vide  my  Evohdion  of  Religion,  pp.  204-205. 


PERSONAL   AND    INDIVIDUAL   RELIGION        143 

that   a   man    commits  ? "     "  Yes,   and   of  every  evil 
intention."^ 

And  in  the  fifth  century  this  momentous  idea  was 
secured  for  the  popular  religion  through  the  medium 
of  the  Delphic  oracle :  Herodotus  '^  recounts  how  a 
certain  man,  Glaukos  of  Sparta,  with  whom  a  large 
sum  of  money  had  been  deposited  on  trust,  came  to 
consult  the  god  with  the  audacious  question  whether 
he  might  break  his  trust  and  purloin  the  money 
without  danger  to  himself.  The  prompt  denuncia- 
tions of  the  oracle  reduced  him  to  fear  and  repentance; 
but  in  answer  to  his  prayers  for  forgiveness,  the 
Pythoness  sternly  proclaimed  that  God  judges  us 
by  our  thoughts,  and  that  to  tempt  God  even  in 
thought  was  as  heinous  a  sin  as  the  act  which  he  had 
contemplated. 

To  the  same  range  of  thought  belongs  the  view 
that  man's  soul  was  the  more  divine  part  of  his  nature, 
also  that  the  'godhead  was  not  so  much  a  corporeal 
personality,  such  as  the  popular  religion  imagined  it, 
as  a  spirit  or  a  soul-power,  the  pov<;  or  the  \ljv)(y]  of  the 
universe.^  This  conception  of  the  deity  could  only 
prevail  in  philosophic  circles  ;  but  Euripides,  the  poet 
of  all  others  who  loved  to  play  irresponsibly  with  the 
current  philosophy  of  his  age,  and  possessed  the  gift 
to  find  the  memorable  phrase,  did  his  best  to  intro- 
duce it  to  the  people :   in  more  than  one  passage  he 

1  Attributed  to  Pittakos,  Diog.  Laert.^  1.   76;  to  Thales,  id.,   1. 
§  35.  2  6^  86. 

2  Thales  is  the  earliest  thinker  to  whom  this  view  is  attributed  : 
0aXr}s  vovv  tou  Koafxav  Otov  Acyci,  Plut.^  881  E;  cj.  Arist.,  p.  411. 


144      HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

suggests  not  only  that  God  may  be  Mind,  but  that 
He  may  be  identical  with  the  mind  of  man — "  The 
mind  in  each  one  of  us  is  God"  is  a  fragmentary 
utterance  attributed  to  Euripides, or  with  less  authority 
to  Menander.^  But  a  genuine  and  most  characteristic 
sentence  is  found  in  the  former  poet's  Troades  :  "  Oh, 
thou  that  stayest  the  earth  and  hast  thy  firm  throne 
thereon,  whosoe'er  thou  art,  unfathomable  to  human 
knowledge,  whether  thou  art  Zeus,  or  the  necessity 
of  nature,  or  the  mind  of  man,  to  thee  I  raise  my 
voice  !  "  ^  It  is  also  noteworthy  that  a  popular  lyrist, 
Melanippides,  before  the  age  of  Euripides,  expressed 
the  concept  of  God  as  an  eternal  spirit :  "  Hear  me, 
Father,  O  !  Mystery  of  our  life,  Lord  of  the  ever- 
living  soul."^ 

Now,  an  inevitable  corollary  of  this  theologic 
concept  and  this  view  of  man's  nature  is  that  the 
individual  can  enjoy  direct  communion  with  God, 
not  merely  or  necessarily  through  the  ritual  of  sacra- 
ment or  magic  means,  but  through  inward  sympathy 
of  spirit ;  and  the  attainment  of  this  unity  with  the 
divinity,  or  the  closest  possible  approximation  to  him, 
begins  to  be  held  out  by  the  leading  ethical  thinkers 
as  the  ideal  of  a  virtuous  hfe ;  and  here  we  find 
morality  striving  towards  the  same  end  as  that  which 
the  Greek  mysteries  professed  to  attain  by  other 
means.  In  our  record  we  should  give  precedence  to 
a  sentiment  of  Charondas,  the  legislator  of  Katana 
of  the  sixth  century — if  we  could  regard  anything  that 

1  Vide  Dind.,  Frag.,  1007.  ^  Troades,  884. 

3  Clem.  Alex.,  Strom.,  p.  71 6. 


PERSONAL   AND   INDIVIDUAL   RELIGION        145 

is  attributed  to  him  as  authentic :  "  No  unjust  man  ^ 
can  have  communion  with  God."^     A  more  definite  1 
and  more  pregnant  saying  was  attributed  to  Pytha- 
goras, and  might  be  rightfully  claimed  at  least  by  the 
Pythagorean  school."   To  the  question,  "  By  what  kind 
of  action   do  men  most  resemble  the  gods  ? "  he  is 
said  to  have  responded,  "  By  attaining  to  truth."     He 
is  probably  not  alluding  to  simple  truthfulness  in  our 
ordinary   statements,    but   to  the   possession  of  the 
highest  truths  of  thought  and  philosophy  whereby  we 
become  most  like  to  the  divine  nature.     For  it  was 
as  characteristic  of  the  Greek  genius  to  lay  stress  on 
the  intellectual,  as  it  was  for  the  Hebraic  to  lay  stress 
on  the  moral  attributes  of  the  godhead.     The  same 
idea  as  that  attributed  to  Pythagoras  presents  itself 
frequently  in  the  higher  metaphysic  of  Plato,  and  is 
accepted  by  the  more  secular  Aristotle,  who  places 
2o(/>La   or  metaphysical  truth  as  the  highest  goal  of 
human  effort,  as  the  crown  of  all  virtue,  because  it 
brings  men  into  nearest  likeness  to  God.     Here,  as 
so  often,  we  find   Greek   philosophy   developing   on 
lines  that  are   distantly  parallel  to  certain  develop- 
ments of  Greek  popular  religion,  for  this,  too,  as  has 
been  shown,  possessed  a  natural  sympathy  with  much 
of  the  intellectual  life  of  man. 

But  also  moral  action  and  the  moral  life  were 
sometimes  supposed  by  the  leading  ethical  teachers 
to  enable  man  to  achieve  divine  communion.  In  the 
Thecetetus  Plato  declares  that  the  man  who  is  most 

1  Stobac.,  44.  40;  Meineke,  vol.  ii.  p.  180. 

2  Stobae.,  11.  25;  Mein.,  i.  p.  252. 

10 


146       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

just  bears  the  nearest  likeness  to  God/  and  again  in 
the  Laws,^  in  a  passage  where  he  emphasises  the 
divine  nature  of  the  soul,  he  proclaims  immorality  to 
be  a  dishonour  done  to  the  essence  of  the  soul. 

This  quickened  sensitiveness  of  the  religious 
consciousness,  and  this  belief  in  the  attainment  of 
divine  communion  through  purely  spiritual  methods, 
were  certain  to  engender  in  the  more  enlightened 
natures  a  higher  theory  concerning  prayer,  sacrifice, 
purification,  and  all  external  ritual.  And  on  all  these 
topics  Greek  religious  philosophy  has  left  us  some 
memorable  utterances  and  teaching.  It  represented 
true  prayer  as  an  inward  communion  with  the 
divinity,^  rather  than  as  a  petition  for  external  bless- 
ings ;  true  sacrifice  as  the  "widow's  mite,"*  or  the 
sacrifice  of  the  righteous  heart  ;^  true  purification, 
not  as  the  ceremonious  washing  of  hands,  but  as  the 
inward  cleansing  of  the  soul.  Already,  in  the  earlier 
part  of  the  fifth  century,  Epicharmes  had  declared : 
"  Thou  art  pure  in  thy  whole  body  if  thou  art  pure  in 
soul,"  ^  and  spiritual  purity  becomes  regarded  at  last 
as  a  positive  state  of  blessedness.     At  the  beginning 

1  176  h.  2  727. 

3  Maximus  Tyrius,  Dissert.,  11;  cf.  Porphyry  ap.  Proclum,  In 
Thn.,  2.  64  B  ;  2.  65  ;  Sallustius,  De  Diis  et  Mundo,  c.  l6. 

4  The  Antholog7iomicum  of  Orion  (Stobaeus,  Meineke,  iv.  p.  264) 
contains  a  quotation  from  a  lost  play  of  Euripides — cu  la-ff  orav  rts 
€V(T€fSwv  Ovrj  Oeo2<s  kolv  ixiKpa  Ovrj  Ti;yxav€t  (Twrrypta?  (^'  Know  well  that 
when  one  sacrifices  to  the  gods  in  piety,  one  wins  salvation  though 
the  sacrifice  be  little  "). 

5  Ova-La  Twv  Oewv  yvoifxr]  ayaOrj,  Sacra  Parall.,  Tit.,  ix.  p.  640  ;  cf. 
Aristides,  i.  p.  753  (Dindorf). 

6  Clem.  Alex.,  Stro77i.,  p.  844. 


PERSONAL  AND   INDIVIDUAL  RELIGION       147 

of  the  Aureum  Carmen  of  Hierokles,  a  product  of 
the  later  Pythagoreanism,  we  read  that  "  God  has 
no  fairer  temple  on  earth  than  the  pure  soul." 

As  personal  religion  grew  in  intensity,  the  spirit  of 
individualism  grew  also,  and  the  old  religion  of  kin- 
ship and  tribe,  and  the  morality  of  kin  and  status, 
must  have  waned  in  proportionate  degree.  In  this 
there  was  some  gain  and  some  loss.  Plato,  the  chief 
organ  of  the  more  profound  religious  spirit,  himself 
preached,  as  we  have  seen,  the  social  morality  of  the 
Greek  city-state ;  but  philosophic  thought  in  other 
circles  inclined  men  to  the  celibate  life  ;  and  Euripides, 
whom  later  individualism  might  claim  as  its  apostle, 
not  infrequently  comments  querulously  on  the  dis- 
advantages of  the  married  state  ;  and  his  cry  of  weak- 
ness— t^tfkoj  S'  dya/xov9  areKvov^  re  j^porojv^ — is  echoed 
in  the  younger  comedy.  To  the  same  trend  of  thought 
belongs  the  nobler  sentiment  that  a  good  man  does 
not  wholly  depend  on  his  "  polls  "  for  his  happiness  ; 
Demokritos  may  have  been  the  first  to  have  given 
voice  to  this  idea :  "  Of  a  virtuous  soul  the  whole 
universe  is  the  fatherland,"^  but  none  could  have 
ever  expressed  it  more  beautifully  than  Euripides  : 
"  The  whole  expanse  of  air  is  open  to  the  eagle's 
flight,  and  every  land  is  native  soil  to  the  noble  man,"  ^ 
though  when  he  chose  he  could  as  well  champion  the 
narrower  traditional  view. 

The   new   spirit    may   have    helped    to    spread  a 

1  Ak.  882. 

2  Stob.,  FLoriL,  40.  ^  7  (Meineke,  vol.  ii.  p.  65). 

3  Id.,  40.  §  9  (Mein.,  ii.  p.  71). 


148       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

different  theory  concerning  slavery ;  for  while  Aris- 
totle was  guilty  of  the  view  that  certain  barbarian 
races  were  "  by  nature "  designed  to  be  enslaved  to 
the  Hellene,  the  last  part  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
American  Revolution  that  "  all  men  are  born  free  and 
equal "  begins  to  be  heard  in  the  fourth  century  b.c.  ; 
a  fragment  of  the  poet  Philemon,  of  the  younger  Attic 
comedy,  expresses  the  new  dogma  that  "  no  one  is  by 
nature  born  a  slave."  ^ 

It  would  be  impossible  within  the  limits  of  this 
short  sketch  to  trace  in  detail  the  workings  of  this  new 
spirit  in  the  special  parts  of  the  moral  domain.  But 
we  may  note  in  passing  that  while  it  tended  to  break 
down  the  old  barriers,  it  does  not  seem  to  have  suc- 
ceeded in  substituting  for  the  narrow  system  of  civic 
duties  the  clear  ideal  of  humanitarian  philanthropy : 
nor  did  any  Greek  pre-Christian  school  proclaim  the 
general  duty  of  active  benevolence  or  philanthropic 
mission-work.^ 

Its  great  gain  was  the  broadening  of  the  religious 
horizon.  We  seem  to  breathe  an  ampler  air,  and  to 
recognise  in  later  Hellenism,  before  the  clouds  of 
mystic  theosophy  troubled  the  sky,  the  main  features 
of  our  modern  spiritual  world. 

It  remains  a  question  of  difficulty  how  far  the 
humanitarian  spirit  of  philosophic  speculations  on 
religion  and  ethics  influenced  the  mass  of  the  people 

1  Frag.  39,  Meineke-Bothe.,  p.  771. 

2  The  nearest  approach  to  such  a  moral  idea  is  perhaps  found  in 
ApoUonius  of  Tyana,  Ep.  392,  Philostrati  Opera,  Kayser,  1.  p.  351 
("  one  gratifies  the  gods  not  by  sacrifice,  but  by  achieving  wisdom 
and  by  doing  all  the  good  in  one's  power  to  deserving  men  "). 


PERSONAL   AND   INDIVIDUAL   RELIGION        149 

and  the  popular  worship  and  cult-ideas.  Certainly 
it  was  not  confined  to  the  narrow  academic  society 
of  the  schools :  it  could  touch  the  people  through 
Euripides  and  after  him  chiefly  through  Menander, 
who  used  the  new  comedy  as  a  vehicle  for  the  ex- 
pression of  much  that  belongs  to  a  high  personal 
religion — we  are  arrested  by  such  lines  as,  "  The 
mind's  light  is  to  fix  its  gaze  ever  on  God"^ — and 
of  moral  judgments  that  occasionally  anticipate  the 
teaching  of  the  New  Testament. 

The  forms  of  the  old  cults  and  the  divine  person- 
alities maintain  themselves  with  little  change  for 
many  centuries.  But  the  new  humanitarian  religious 
spirit  was  potent  among  the  causes  that  led  to  the 
extinction  of  Hellenic  polytheism  ;  the  people  turned 
with  eagerness  and  devotion  to  new  divinities  such 
as  Asklepios,  Cybele  and  Attis,  and  Isis,  for  these 
came  to  them  not  as  the  deities  of  any  family,  or 
tribe,  or  city,  but  as  world-powers  appealing  to  man- 
kind and  to  the  individual.  On  the  other  hand, 
Demeter  and  Kore,  the  mother  and  daughter  of 
Eleusis,  retained  much  of  their  power  until  the  con- 
quest of  Christianity  only  because  they,  alone  of  the 
Olympians,  had  early  broken  the  bonds  of  clan  and 
caste  and  had  invited  the  civilised  world  to  their 
fellowship. 

Therefore  as  the  old-world  system  of  the  free  city- 
state,  that  genial  family-union  of  kinsmen,  slowly 
perished,  the  gods  of  kinship  that  had  grown  up  with 

^  ^(U9  icTTL  TO)  vw  Trpos  0€6v  ^Kimiv  dci,  Meiiiek.,  vol.   iv.  p.   356  ; 

TvwfxaL  MoVOCTTLXOt,   589. 


150       HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 

it  perished  with  the  social  fabric  that  was  partly  their 
own  creation.  Apollo  and  Athena  were  too  much 
citizens  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  new  order.  But 
we  who  believe  that  the  world's  culture  owes  an 
immeasurable  debt  to  the  ancient  Polls,  should  now 
recognise  that  part  of  that  debt  on  our  rich  inherit- 
ance of  art,  morality,  and  thought  is  due  to  that 
political  religion. 


APPENDIX 

P.  21.  For  the  aboriginal  character  of  Zeus  vide  Mr  Cook's 
articles  in  the  Classical  Review,  1903  and  onwards,  on  "  Zeus 
Jupiter  and  the  Oak.'"' 

P.  24.  The  question  of  the  existence  of  a  matrilinear  society 
in  prehistoric  Greece  has  been  critically  considered  in  a  paper 
"  On  the  Alleged  Evidence  for  Mother-Right  in  Early  Greece," 
by  Mr  H.  J.  Rose,  in  Folklore,  September  1911. 

P.  30,  n.  4.  For  this  curious  marriage-custom  vide  Mr 
Halliday's  article  in  Annual  of  the  British  School,  1909-1910, 
p.  215,  "Note  on  Herodotos  vi.  83  and  the  Hybristika." 

P.  31,  1.  10.  The  important  words  are  found  on  the  second 
column  of  the  payprus.  e/c  tovtov  8e  6  vo/ulo^  iyevero  koi 
Oeoio'i  KOI  avOpooTTOKTi,  ih.,  p.  5. 

P.  36,  1.  1-2.  "  TO  S'  OLpa-ev  'iaTm  ev  So/uloi^  ael  yevo<i  Oewv 
Trarpwcou  koi  tol^cov  Tijuaopov.^^ 

P.  36,  1.  16.  "  XP^  ''"^^  aeiyevov^  (pvcreco^  avTexeaOai  tw 
iralSaq  TralScov  KaraXeiTrovTa  ael  rco  Oeci)  virr}p6Ta<i  avO'  avrov 
TrapaSiSovat.^^ 

P.  41,  1.  2.  "  aSiK€i  yeveOXlwg  Oecog,  olkw  kol  (Tvyyevela  ov 
ypao-iwg  eiriKOvpcog  aWa  voOcog  irapexoixeva'  aSiKcI  Se  rwg  (pvcrei 
Oewg  ovcnrep  iiro/uioa-aa-a  ixera  twv  avrdg  iraTepwv  re  Ka\  o-vyyevwv 
(TuveXevcrea'Oal    eTr^    koivcjovlci    jS/co    koi    tckvcov    yeveaei    ra    Kara 

VOjULOV. 

P.  46,  1.  23.  "  arvyyeveiav  Se  kgi  ojULoyuicov  Oecoi/  KOLvwviav 
oLTraa'av  ravTOv  cpvcriv  aijuiaTog  exovcrav  riiuwv  rig  koi  crePo^evo^i 
evvovg  av  yeveOXlovg  Oeof?  eig  iralSoov  avrov  airopuv  laxoi-  ' 

P.  47,  1.  5.  "  TOi'9  apco  Oeovg  (poBeia-Ocoi',  oi  rcop  6p(pai'(Joi/  rrjg 
eprjjuiLag  alaQyiareLfi  exovcri,  Ka]  ra  irepl  ravra  o^v  juev  ukovovctl, 
[iXeirovcrl  re  o^v,  roh  Se  irep\  avra  SiKaloiii  eu/xe^ei"?  eial,  vejULecruxrl 

161 


152     HIGHER   ASPECTS   OF   GREEK   RELIGION 


T€ 


lULoXia-ra  au  roig  ei?  6p(pava  kol  eprjixa  vPpl^ovan,  irapaKara- 
OriKriv  etvai  lULeyla-Trjv  y]yovp.evoL  kol  lepwrarriv.'' 

P.  49,  ].  24.  Stobseus,  Florileg.  (Meineke,  iii.  p.  74)  :  a/ixl3\L<TK€iv 
a-n-elirov  rah  yui^aFft  ....  ttw?  6'  ovxi  kol  elg  rovg  Trarpwovg 
Oeovg  e^aixapTavoLjjLev  av  kol  h  tov  ofxoyvLOv  A/a  ra  roLavra 
-TrpaTTOvreg.  In  an  article  in  the  Archivfilr  Religions gesMchte, 
906,  p.  312,  on  "  "AwpoL  BiaioOdvaroi,''''  M.  Salomon  Reinach 
traces  the  idea  of  the  immorality  of  abortion  to  Orphism  ;  the 
evidence  is  indirect  and  somewhat  frail;  vide  Archiv,  1909, 
p.  224,  where  Dr  Sam  Wide  criticises  his  theory. 

P.  57,  1.  3.  Fragment  of  comedy  by  Alexis  :  to??  yap  opOaxi 
eiSoa-i  TO,  Oeia  /mei^ov  nJir]Tp6g  ovk  ecmv  irore. 

P.  57,  1.  29.  There  is  no  reasonableness  in  the  view  that  the 
late  cult-record  of  Zeus-Agamemnon  proves  that  Agamemnon 
was  originally  Zeus;  vide  Lykophron,  Cassandra,  1122,  and 
Schol.  Lykophr.,  1369. 

P.  79,  1.  8.  "  ocTTig  ^o/Seirai  top  irarepa  Kaa-xuperai    ovrog 

TToX/r^y?  ayaOog  earrai  Kara  \6yov,  kol  rovg  TroXe/x/oiy?  Svva.p.evog 

^  -   in 

KaKcog  iroieLv- 

P.  82,  n.  2.  Frag.  514 :  eyuo  p-ev  ovv  ovk  otS'  oirwg  cTKOirelv 
Xpecov  I  rrjp  evyeveiav'  Tovg  yap  avSpeiovg  (pvdiv  \  Ka\  rovg 
SiKalovg  Twv  kcvwp  So^aa-juLarwv,  \  kolv  mo-l  Sov\a)v,  evyevecrrepovg 
Xeyo).  Frag.  515 :  SovXov  yap  ecrOXov  rovvop,'  ov  Sia(pO€p€ii 
TToWol  S''  apLeivovg  etVf  rwv  eXevOepwv. 

P.  96,  1.  16.  De  Fals.  Legat.,  115:  fXijSeiuLav  iroXtv  rwv 
'AjUL^iKTvoviSwv  avda-raTOV  Troiweiv  mS'  vSdrwv  vap.aTiaiwv 
eip^eiv  p.y]T  ev  iroXejuLO)  /uLr'jr  ev  eip-i'jvih  edv  Se  rig  ravra  Trapaprj, 
(TTpareva-eLV  evrf  toutov  Ka\  rag  iroXeig  avaa-Ti'](jeiv. 

P.  99,  1.  20.  The  accuser  and  the  accused  before  the  court 
of  the  Areopagos  must  take  the  oath  a-rdg  eir\  rcov  Top.Lwv 
Kdirpov  Ka\  Kpiov  Ka\  ravpov,  "  standing  on  the  severed  limbs  of 
a  boar,  a  ram,  and  a  bull,''  thus  putting  himself  into  communion 
with  the  divinity  to  whom  these  had  been  sacrificed  and  whose 
spirit  was  in  them. 

P.  102,  1.  2.  "  o?  iJiev  TalSicrerai  Kovpag  Atog  aacrov  lovcrag 
TOV  Se  jULey'  covrjaav  Kal  t   €k\vov  cuxop-evoio' 
og  Si  K  dvi]vt]Tai  Kal  re  crTepewg  aTToetTr?/, 
Xicra-ovTai  S'  apa  Tal  ye  A/a  Kpovioova  Kiova-ai 
Tw  "kTt]v  oifx  eTrea-Oai,  %a  ^Xa(j)6elg  aTroTia-iJ.''' 


APPENDIX  153 

P.  104,  1.  19.  ^' (plXiog  Se  KOi  'ErazpeFo?  (Zevg  eTrovojuLa^eraL), 
on     iravra'i     avOpcoTrovg     avvayei     Kai    ^ovXeraL    (piXovg    elvai 

P.  108,  n.  1.   "  ert  imeyag  ovpavw 

Zey?,  09  e(popa  iravra  KaL  Kparvvei. 
ch  Tov  VTrepriXyrj  x^Xov  vejuovaa 
IUL}]0'  oh  exOalpoiq  virepaxOeo  iJ.rjT   eiriXdOov.'''' 
P.  109,  1.  21.   "  aXX'  ecrri  yap  Kal  7ii]v\  orvvOaKO^  Opovcov 

AiStog  e-Tr'  epyoig  iraarL^  Kai  tt/oo?  crol,  Trarep, 
TrapacTTaOrjTO).'^'' 
P.  142,    n.    2.    (Stobaeus'    quotation    from    Bias.)      '^Qi/   tou 
crcojULaTO^  OLTraXXaye'ig  ov  Se})(Tr],  eKeivwv  Kara^povei  iravrwv'     Kai 
tov  ciTraXXayeh   ^^Wlh    "^po^    Tavra  ctol    aa-KovjuevM    tou^    6eov9 
irapaKoXeL  ylveaOal  croi  o-fAX^/Trro/oa?. 

P.  144,  1.  6.   "ft)  y^?  ox^f^ci  kolttI  yfjg  ex^v  eSpav 

ooTTig  iroT   el  (Xf,  SvaTOirao'TO';  aSevaif 
Zevg,  €LT   uvdyKt]  (pva-eog  e'lre  vov<i  ^poTwy^ 
P.  144,  1.  12.   '^  kXuOl  iJi.oi',  M  Trare/Q,  Oavjma  Pporwv^ 
ra?  aei^wou  xfrvxcig  imeSecov. 


INDEX  OF  NAMES  AND  SUBJECTS 


Adrastos^  hero-cult  of^  68. 

Aiakidai,  67,  94,  95. 

Aias  Oileus,  67. 

Amphidromia,  Attic  festival,  28. 

Amphiktyones  at  Delphi,  96,  97. 

Ancestor-worship,  35,  44. 

Animatism,  5. 

Animism,  5. 

Anthesteria,  66. 

Anthropomorphism,  3,  4. 

Aphrodite,  Pandemos,  70,  72. 

Apollo,  Northern  origin  of,  15; 
patron  of  intellectual  life,  123, 
124;  political  character  of,  6l, 
69 ;  AeX^iVtos,  90 ;  riarpcuo?, 
63,  72;  ^lXi^ctlo?,  104;  ^ol/So?, 
23  ;  Apolline  music,  118. 

Aristotle,  general  character  of 
the  ethics  of,  80. 

Arktinos  of  Miletos,  87. 

Art,  religious  aspect  of,  116-120. 

Artemis,  na/x<^vAata,  70. 

Ate,  116. 

Athena,  'A|^to7roivos,  89  ;  Arj/J^o- 
Kparia,  71;  ^parpta,  6I,  69; 
goddess  of  art,  1 1 7. 

Attis  and  Kybele,  1 49- 

Babylonian  religion,  influence  of, 
16,  17;  contrasted  with  Greek, 
133. 

Boghaz-Keui,  inscription  from,  12. 

Boreas,  worshipped  as  ^^ citizen" 
at  Thourioi,  74. 

Celibacy,  79- 

Chastity,  79- 

City,  religious  origin  of,  64. 

Clan-system,  religious  organisa- 
tion of,  58-64  ;  morality  of,  76- 
78. 

Communion  with  divinity,  34,  35, 
144-146. 

Cosmogonies,  122. 

Courage,  religious  sanction  of, 
80-82. 


Crete,  9-11,  16,  17,  29- 

Curse,  moral  value  of  the,  51-53. 

Daimones,  1 1 6. 
Delphic  oracle,  97-99,  143. 
Demeter,  32. 

Dionysos,  74  ;  of  Eleutherai,  70  ; 
Dionysiac  music,  118,  119- 

Egyptian  religion,  influence  of,  1 7. 
Eleusinian  mysteries,  137-139- 
Erechtheus,  cult  of,  67. 
Erinyes,    moral   function    of,   39- 

40,  85-86,  90-91,  101. 
Eumeleidai,  clan  at  Naples,  60. 
Euripides,  religious  speculation  of, 

112-114,  121,  143-144,  147. 
Evil,  theory  of,  114-116. 

Fires,  perpetual   maintenance  of, 

66,  68. 
Freedom,  a  religious  ideal,  82-84. 
Friendship,  religious  sanction  of, 

103,  104. 

Games,  religious  influence  of,  96. 
Ghosts,   belief  in,  a   social  force, 
54,  88-90. 

Hagia-Triada  sarcophagus,  10. 
Hagnon,  Athenian  cekist,  cult  of, 

68. 
Hearth-worship,  27-29,  65-66. 
Hera,  patroness  of  marriage,  37, 

39. 
Heralds,  sanctity  of,  100. 
Homeric  evidence,  value  of,  18-20. 
Homicide,  moral-religious  feeling 

concerning,  84-91. 
Hospitality,  religious  duty  of,  1 02- 

103. 

Individualism,  in  morals,  147-148. 
Ixion,  myth  of,  110. 

Justice,    personification    of,    108; 
religious  view  of,  113-114. 


164 


INDEX   OF  NAMES   AND  SUBJECTS 


155 


Keramos,  ancestor  of  Potters' 
Guild,  61. 

Lakedaimon,    religious    personifi- 
cation of,  60. 
Lykourgos,  68. 

Magic,  6-7,  51-53. 

Male  divinity,  supremacy  of,  15-16, 

Marriage,  religious  forms,  31-36; 
religious  sentiment  concerning, 
33-37  ;  moral  duties  of,  38-43  ; 
ancient  theory  contrasted  with 
modern,  61-62. 

Matrilinear  society,  25-27. 

Medicine,  associated  with  re- 
ligion,  123-124. 

Mercy,  divine  attribute,  108-1 16. 

Minoan  religion,  vide  Crete. 

Mother-goddesses,  9,   15-16,  72. 

Muses,  significance  of  cult  of,  119- 
120. 

Mysteries,  vide  Eleusinian  ;  Samo- 
thracian,  141. 

Mythology,  immoral  influence  of, 
129-131. 

Names,  religious  influence  of,  105- 

107. 
Nature-worship,  4-5. 
Nemesis,    social-religious    feeling, 

102. 

Oaths,   international  morality   of, 

99-100. 
Orphans,  duty  to,  47. 
Orphism,  5,  73,  75-76,   136,  139- 

141. 

Parents,  duty  to,  45-46,  49. 

Patrilinear  system  of  family,  25, 32. 

Perjury,  religious  sentiment  con- 
cerning,  129. 

Persecution,  religious,  121,  122. 

Phratries,  religious  organisation 
of,  58-64. 

Pity,  personification  of.  111. 

Political  character  of  Greek  re- 
ligion, 69-71. 


Poseidon,  Aw/AartrT;?,  6I. 

Prayer,  1 42 ;  personification  of, 
101-102. 

Proto-Hellenic  religion,  II-I6, 
21-24. 

Puberty  ceremonies,  22-23. 

Punishment,  vicarious,  76 ;  re- 
ligious theory  of,    107-108. 

Purification,  23. 

Purity,  135-136,  146-147. 

Pythagorean  morality,  38,  40-41, 
49-50,  136,  140  n.  1. 

Sacrament,    136-137,   138-139; 

of  marriage,  33. 
Sacrifice,  vicarious,  77-78  ;  higher 

view  of,  146. 
Science,  its   relation  to    religion, 

120-124. 
Sin,    consciousness    of,    131-134; 

dogma  of  original,  134. 
Slavery,     influence     of     religion 

upon,  53-56,  148. 
Smith,  Professor  Robertson,  132. 
Synoikesia,  Attic  festival,  70. 

Theism,  1-3. 
Themis,  91. 
Theriomorphism,  3,  9. 
Totemism,  not  proved  for  Greece, 

22. 
Tritopatores,  Attic  ancestors,  36. 
Truthfulness,  123,  129. 
Tydeus,  death  of,  81. 

Virginity,  Greek  view  of,  42-43. 

Zeus,    god    of  marriage,    39-42 
of    underworld,     21  ;      AtSotos 
111;  ^Afji(fiL6a\rj<;,  45  ;  TeviOXios 
4^4^,     50,     51;     'EXci;^€ptos,     83: 
'EXA.ai/10?       (TlaviWdvios),       94 
95,    96;    'Ep/cero?,    30,    43,    55 
60,   63,   65  ;    'E<^ta-Tto?,    30,   43 
'I/ceV?/?,        'lK€o-to9,         1 1 0  -  117 
MetXt^^tos,      86-88  ;      'OXv/w,7rios 
94;      *0/i,oyi/io9,      44,     50,     51 
IlavSry/xo?,     70 ;      narpojo?,      44 
50,  51,   57,  61  ;    Tt/xwpo?,    107 
^t'Atos,  104;  ^pa.rpLo<i,  62. 


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